Escapee gets lucky break after 44 years on lam

By Allen G. Breed
The Associated Press

Escapee Eddie Miller spent 44 years on the lam.

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"Mr. Mayes!" said Detective Greg Farliss to the grizzled man behind the barred screen door.

"Where you get that from?" Miller answered.

"That's your name," the detective replied, undeterred.

Miller didn't see any point in arguing. After all, when he walked off that prison work detail and into the Georgia woods, 44 years of freedom were more than he ever could have hoped for.

"Well, here I am then," said the 69-year-old retired fruit picker. "You got your man."

Thinking back on it, Eddie Miller realizes his life has been one of unexpected setbacks and even more unexpected boons. It also has been a life of second chances — some willingly given, others he took for himself.

Growing up in Warren County, Ga., Eddie "Bee" Mayes didn't even know who his father was. There were so many kids in the house that Lula Mayes decided to send her boy to live with her brother in neighboring McDuffie County.

Mayes' uncle made him go to church about every Sunday. But when it came to school, third grade was far enough.

In his early teens, Mayes spent a couple of years in a juvenile facility for burglary. When he got out, he decided to head south to Fort Pierce, Fla., where he was told there was good money to be made picking fruit and vegetables.

In late 1956, Mayes went home to Georgia to visit family. One night, he was driving around with his half brother, Frank Ellis, and Frank's friend, W.C. Clarke, when he fell asleep in the back seat.
 
Mayes says he awoke to the sound of sirens.

The Augusta Chronicle of Nov. 29, 1956, reported that "three Negro men" had been charged with several holdups and robberies in five counties between Athens and Augusta.

Mayes waived his rights to jury trials, evidently not fully understanding what that meant. He says his brother told the judges Mayes wasn't involved. Mayes ended up pleading guilty after being advised that he'd only serve a little bit of time. When the sentences from the five counties were tallied, Mayes was looking at a minimum of 35 years.

Mayes was sent to the Jefferson County Public Works Camp, an unfenced facility.

Inmates were driven out into the county to dig ditches, clear brush or lay water lines. One day the guards took Mayes out to a pit where lumber was soaked in creosote preservative.

Mayes got the chemical in his eyes, and they began to burn. He says he complained to a guard, who accused him of slacking off.

He was given 10 days in "the hole." Mayes says he was stripped to his shorts, placed in a tiny, windowless cell, and put on bread and water.

Not long after that stint was over, a guard accused Mayes of not working fast enough. Another 10 days in the hole.

The day that punishment ended, July 22, 1960, Mayes went straight back to work detail. Weak from reduced rations, he was at his breaking point.

This particular day, a gang was digging a drainage ditch 12 miles from the camp, about 100 yards from a dense pine forest.

Mayes asked the warden for permission to get a drink of water. He quenched his thirst, then walked back past the guards and just kept walking.

"Shoot me and get it over," Mayes recalled saying to himself as he marched toward those woods, the guns to his back. " 'Cause I'm gone."

There were no shots, and Mayes walked on.

Before long, he came across an open dump where he found a pair of ratty jeans and other clothes. He swapped them for his prison uniform and began to run.

He emerged from the woods onto U.S. 1, the road he'd taken home four years earlier. He flagged down a tractor-trailer; the driver told him he was headed for Miami.

Mayes asked the man if he could take him as far as Fort Pierce.

Mayes settled back into migrant work, picking tomatoes and peppers around St. Lucie County and picking apples in New York's Hudson Valley. He called himself Miller, the name of the man he thought was his father.

Miller began to believe he was home free.

In fall 1966, Miller was working near Rochester, N.Y., when a woman caught his eye. Within three weeks, he and Ethel Jones, 18, were going to drive-in movies together. He told her where he was born, but he never mentioned the name Mayes — or the troubles associated with it.

They married in 1969 and raised two sons and a daughter. As the years passed, Miller worked the fields and kept his nose clean. He didn't drink or smoke, and his only brushes with the law were a speeding citation and a $500 fine for transporting fruit without a ticket.

Miller had long since ceased worrying about being reincarcerated. So confident was he that, in 2001, he moved his family briefly to McDuffie County.

He had no idea that his arrest warrant had been updated in 1991 and entered into the new computerized criminal-identification system. Unlike the original, this one included an alias:

Eddie Miller.

On March 5, Ethel Miller went out for a hair appointment. On her way home, she called her husband to see if he wanted her to bring him something for lunch.

When she arrived home 15 minutes later, the house was empty. About four hours later, at 6:30, her husband called her from the St. Lucie County Jail.

"I should have told you a long lot of years ago," he said. "... They had an old warrant out on me."

Ethel Miller started screaming.

"They must have the wrong man," she sobbed. "What am I going to do now?"

As it turns out, the authorities had been on Miller's trail for three months.

In late December, Miller had applied to be put on a visitor's list at Avon Park Correctional Institution, where his son was serving 27 months for armed burglary.

During a routine background check, a data-entry operator got a hit on an old Georgia warrant. The birth dates didn't match, but the name Eddie Miller did.

During a jail visit, Miller apologized to his wife for not telling her about his past. She told him she and the family were behind him, and that the entire church was praying for him.

Miller was transferred to Autry State Prison in Pelham, Ga., a close-security prison, to a dormitory with mostly young, violent offenders. They called him Pop.

Miller whiled away the hours cleaning up around the dorm. He played cards and chess with the other inmates. At night, he would say the Lord's Prayer.

Unit manager Keith Jones says Miller had the air of a man who was resigned to take whatever fate had in store for him.

The Department of Corrections notified the State Board of Pardons and Paroles of Miller's recapture. Noting his age and 44 years of clean living, the board voted to consider Miller for commutation. Miller had not even hired a lawyer and had no idea the board had taken up his case.

On June 1, Jones walked up to him with a fax in his hand.

"I've got some good news for you," he told Miller, then read aloud from a letter stating that Miller's sentence had been commuted to time served.

"The 11th of this month," Jones said, "you'll be a free man."

The parole board noted that none of the crimes to which the young Mayes had pleaded involved weapons. There are too many young violent offenders who need the prison beds, and board member Mike Light says the decision to show Miller mercy was a rare unanimous one.

"He's shown that's he's worthy of a second chance," Light says.

Sitting barefoot in his favorite chair, his wife next to him, Miller says he intends to make his adopted name legal. Ethel is just fine with that.

The way she sees it, Eddie Mayes died in prison 44 years ago.