‘Pedophile’ prison escapee who eluded capture since 1994 arrested in Georgia

MACON, Ga. — An Oregon sex offender who officials say escaped from a prison work detail in 1994 was captured Tuesday in Middle Georgia, where he had assumed the name of a boy who died in Texas more than half a century ago.

Steven Craig Johnson, who turned 70 on Monday, had been serving a sentence for charges that include sex abuse and attempted sodomy when he vanished three decades ago.

The U.S. Marshals Service, in a news release announcing Johnson’s apprehension, said he had been living under the alias “William Cox.” Specific details of what led marshals to Johnson were not noted in the statement, just that “new investigative technology employed by the Diplomatic Security Service developed new leads in the case.”

The news release said investigators learned that Johnson had at some point “stolen the identity” of the boy who died in Texas in 1962, obtaining the child’s birth certificate. In 1995, Johnson was said to have been issued a social security number in the child’s name in that state. Johnson was said to have used the alias to obtain a Georgia driver’s license in 1998.

Upon his escape in November 1994 from a prison in Salem, Oregon, officials there believed he may have been headed to Texas. It was not immediately known how long he had been in the Macon area, but that he had been living in an apartment here since 2011. Jail officials in Macon said he had no known local arrests.

The apartment building where he was said to be staying, a five-story, 52-unit complex, is typically home to older residents. It lies about five blocks west of I-75, just east of the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House, along Vineville Avenue, a main thoroughfare into and out of downtown Macon.

An alert circulated by Oregon Department of Corrections officials in early 2019 described the hazel-eyed, 6-foot-tall Johnson as “a pedophile” who “presents a high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys” and that he “should not be allowed contact with children.”

Johnson was booked into the Bibb County Jail and is awaiting extradition to Oregon, according to authorities.