Inmate on the run since 1959 captured
ORLANDO, Fla. — When Frank Freshwaters escaped from an Ohio prison in 1959, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, and Fidel Castro had taken power in Cuba.
By the time deputies in West Virginia found Freshwaters in 1975, Gerald Ford was president, Watergate conspirators were headed to prison, and Bill Gates was co-founding an upstart company called Microsoft.
But the fugitive wasn’t in custody for long. He was released after West Virginia’s governor refused to extradite him, and he soon went into hiding.
Freshwaters’ 56 years of freedom ended at a remote Melbourne trailer Monday when officials with the U.S. Marshals Service and the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office showed up with an old mug shot.
“We showed him the picture and said, ‘Hey, have you seen this guy?’ and he looked at it and said, ‘Not in a very long time,’” said Maj. Tod Goodyear with the Sheriff ’s Office.
Freshwaters, 79, had been living under a fake name: William H. Cox.
Freshwaters was arrested as a 21-year-old in Akron, Ohio, after a fatal auto-pedestrian accident in 1957 that led to manslaughter charges. He pleaded guilty and received five years’ probation.
In 1959, he got up to 20 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation. After spending seven months at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield — where “The Shawshank Redemption” was filmed — Freshwaters was transferred to a lower-security prison. He escaped from the Sandusky Honor Farm in September 1959 and forged a new life.
A U.S. Marshals coldcase unit took on the case when it was created three months ago.