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Vest Virginia Police Capture Escapees Sought In LeeHUNTINOTON, W. Va. -Authorities here announced late Wednesday they have recaptured two of four Kentucky State Penitentiary escapees who had been the object pf an extended manhunt in Lee. County, Virginia since early .Tune.' According to the Cabell County Sheriff’s Department, extradition proceedings are underway against Rodney Dale Stevens, 28, of St. Charles and William Eugene Martin, 20, of Harlan, Ky. following their capture in downtown Huntington on Monday evening.A sheriffs department spokesman said the man identified as Stevens has continued to maintain that his actual identity is one “Edward Martin of Ohio since his arrest. But our data shows that he is Rodney Stevens, and he is being held as such,” the spokesman told the Times-News. ‘‘We are convinced that the other name is an alias apparently taken from the man he was captured with.”It was reported that Stevens and Marlin were seized as they drove a car along Huntington’s Fifth Avenue, after police investigatorDarreU Black identified them from official descriptions dispatched by Kentucky authorities.Their arrests were reported to have taken place without incident.The alleged fugitives are accused of fleeing the Russell Counly, Ky. jail . .Tune 6 by knocking a hole in a cell wall, then prying off a security window in the jail’s kitchen in the early morning hours.Stevens' brother, Crockett, 38. and another convicted murderer, John Holland, 27, also of Harlan, fled in that same escape, according to police. All four men had been transferred to the Russell County Jail from the state penitentiary to testify In a trial.The Stevens were serving life sentences at the time for the murder of Kenneth Lynn Smith of Ilarlan County, whose bullet-riddled body was found in an abandoned sawdust pile in Lee County in May, 1874, after several months of investigation.Smith's death was one of three linked to the brothers in a complicated ense which became known as the State Line Killings.
Newspaper Details
Kingsport News
Kingsport, Tennessee, US
Fri, Jul 15, 1977
Page 29
Full Page
Clipped by
William S.
NA, 02 Sep 2018
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