HE NABS HIS PERP - AFTER 49 YRS.
Ex-cop’s hunt for con who shot him
A former Denver cop who was shot as a rookie in 1971 spent nearly 50 years tracking down the escaped convict who pulled the trigger — a hunt that paid off this week with the jailbird’s rearrest in New Mexico.
Forty-nine years after shooting Police Officer Daril Cinquanta, and 46 years after busting out of custody in Colorado, Larry Pusateri, 77, was nabbed on Wednesday in the town of Española, NM, on charges of escape and unlawful flight, according to the FBI.
“I don’t know of anybody who has tracked anyone for 46 years and caught him,” Cinquanta, who helped find Pusateri, told the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The saga began in October 1971, when a newly minted Officer Cinquanta spotted Pusateri, an escapee from a California prison, sitting in the passenger seat of a car, the New Mexican reported, citing a letter the cop wrote to the truecrime show “America’s Most Wanted.”
When Cinquanta approached and asked him to get out, Pusateri shot the cop in the stomach and fled.
Pusateri made it to Mexico but was nabbed in a gunfight with local authorities and extradited to Denver, Cinquanta told the newspaper.
Pusateri was convicted in 1973 of shooting Cinquanta and sentenced to 9½ to 14 years in prison.
But one year into the sentence, in 1974, Pusateri claimed he was sick and was taken to a hospital in Pueblo, Colo., where he and another inmate overpowered a guard, took him hostage and escaped into a waiting vehicle.
A federal warrant was issued for Pusateri’s arrest, but he remained off the radar.
Cinquanta went on to have a long career with the Denver Police Department before leaving to run a private investigation agency.
All the while, he never forgot the man who shot him.
“I have been making phone calls all this time to family, friends, acquaintances. I have been calling people,” Cinquanta said.
“Of course, I have met stone walls, but on the 24th of June, I get a call from a person I had talked to previously.”
The lead took him to Rio Arriba County in New Mexico, where Pusateri — now going by Ramon Montoya — was arrested in 2011 for DWI. That case was dismissed when the arresting officer failed to show up in court.
Cinquanta was unable to find Pusateri’s fingerprint card from that bust, but he did have a photo, which he gave to the FBI and local authorities.
After an approximately monthlong investigation, Pusateri was arrested on Wednesday at the home he and his wife shared in Española — where he had been living as Montoya for some 40 years, 330 miles southwest of Denver.
He denied his true identity, but cops identified him by his tattoos, according to the newspaper.
“The Denver Police Department is grateful to our law-enforcement partners for their tireless commitment to bring this suspect to justice,” said the city’s police chief, Paul Pazen.
And FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Schneider of the Denver field office, said, “This arrest should send a clear signal to violent offenders everywhere. The FBI will find you, no matter how long it takes or how far you run, and we will bring you to justice.”