Fugitive Oregon couple found in Mississippi after 18 years

PORTLAND, ORE. » A couple who eluded arrest on multiple charges of child rape and sodomy in Oregon for nearly 20 years was discovered in Mississippi when the man died and his common-law wife used one of his aliases to make funeral arrangements, a law enforcement official said Thursday.

An undertaker in Mississippi entered the alias used by Leon Henry Shaw into a computer last week and realized Shaw was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, said Eve Costello, the Klamath County, Oregon, district attorney.

FBI agents who have been trying to track down Shaw and his partner, Victoria Michelle Cravitz, since the pair fled Oregon in 2000 moved in and arrested Cravitz. She had been living under the name Jennifer Larsen.

Cravitz made an initial court appearance in Jackson, Mississippi, Thursday on a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and is expected to be returned to Oregon. Federal court documents show she waived a hearing to determine her identity, as well as a preliminary hearing, and was ordered transferred by the judge.

The arrest marks the end of a sordid story that began in 1999 when people who said they had been abused by Shaw and Cravitz as children went to authorities and said they were worried that three other children still living with the couple would also be molested, Costello said.

An affidavit submitted by an FBI special agent in 2000 in support of a criminal complaint says Oregon State Police identified four victims ranging in age from 6 to 17 who had been abused by Shaw between 1989 and 1999.