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Creative escapee captured

MINOT: Every time convicted killer Richard Lee McNair landed behind bars, he dreamed up a new way to escape. He once used lip balm to squeeze out of handcuffs. Another time, he crawled through a prison air vent. Last year, he slipped out with bags of mail.

While on the run, he found time to send a prison warden a Christmas card and used his name to apply for a mobile phone. McNair seemed to be taunting his former captors.

All the while, McNair became one of the United States’ most wanted fugitives — and an Internet star. Tens of thousands watched a 10-minute police dashboard video of him talking his way out of an arrest.

His latest stint on the run ended on Thursday when he was captured in Canada. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Ward County Sheriff Vern Erck said.

Long before anyone knew of McNair, he seemed destined for a career in law enforcement, rather than one in evading it.

The son of a reserve police officer and oldest of four brothers, he grew up in Oklahoma, a brother, Phil, said. “He is about the smartest person I’ve ever met,” he said.

Authorities agree. They say he has a knack for sizing up people and setting them at ease through idle banter, and can think quickly on his feet. McNair once served as an Air Force military police officer, and was a police informant.

“He was a good guy that I always admired — until he made bad choices,” Mr. Phil McNair said.

On Thursday, police captured him about 160 km north of the border in Campbellton, New Brunswick. He had been driving a stolen van. “In typical McNair fashion, he jumped out of the van and took off,” the sheriff said. An officer tackled him down a gravel road. — AP

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