Sheriff: Captured inmate duped pal during escape

[September 21, 2009]  SEATTLE (AP) -- An insane killer was recaptured Sunday, three days after he slipped away from the staff of a mental institution during a trip to a county fair more than 180 miles away from the side of a highway where he eventually was found.

With a helicopter overhead and dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement officers swarming around Goldendale, 47-year-old Phillip Arnold Paul walked out to a highway in south-central Washington state just as search personnel arrived at the scene, Klickitat County Sheriff Rick McComas said.

"He came out of the brush, onto the roadway, as law enforcement officers were going by," McComas told The Associated Press. "His intent was to voluntarily give himself up because he knew we were going to find him."

But Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie D. Knezovich said Paul had just tried to thumb a ride from an area resident who alerted authorities, and seemed to be trying to remain on the loose.

Paul had told a friend in Spokane for months that he was going to be released from the Eastern State State, a mental institution. He went to the friend's house Thursday after escaping during the Spokane County Interstate Fair, Knezovich said in a release.

The friend gave Paul a guitar, a sleeping bag and a leather jacket and drove him out of town. It wasn't until Saturday that the friend learned of the escape. He then contacted detectives and showed them where he dropped off Paul.

Authorities used that information to narrow their search.

Knezovich said the detectives who apprehended Paul drove up to him in an undercover van, jumped out with guns drawn and ordered Paul to the ground.

"He stated he was 'done' and complied with their commands," he said. Knezovich added that Paul had a hand scythe -- a long, curved blade attached to a handle -- in his backpack but made no attempt to reach for it.

One of those involved in the arrest, Spokane County sheriff's Detective Roger W. Knight, also nabbed Paul after he gave Eastern State personnel the slip in 1991 during a field trip in Medical Lake, where the mental institution is located, Knezovich said. Following that arrest, Paul knocked Knight unconscious in the jail booking area and was convicted of first-degree escape and second-degree assault.

Paul was committed after he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and acquitted by reason of insanity in the slaying of an elderly woman in Sunnyside in 1987. He soaked her body in gasoline to throw off search dogs.

McComas said Paul would be taken to Yakima following a checkup by medics in Goldendale. He is expected to appear in Yakima County Superior Court on a warrant stemming from the initial murder case before being returned to Eastern State.

[Associated Press; By TIM KLASS]

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.