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It’s A Small World After All: Florida Fugitive Caught in Vegas

by Heather on February 1st, 2008

This morning as I was ironing clothes for the kids to wear to school I caught a blurb on the morning news about a man from Florida who broke out of prison 33 years ago and was finally apprehended here in Vegas last night. He’d changed his name, his social security number, and was married, had kids and grandkids but no one knew who he really was.

I saw the kids off to school and my next door neighbor was also out front and asked if I’d heard about our neighbor. I said no, thinking the worst, that someone had died or was taken to the hospital. In actuality, our neighbor was carted off to jail and extradited to Florida. Yes, the Florida fugitive lives on my street. I hadn’t watched the whole segment on the news after I finished my ironing and missed the interview with the neighbors across the street that we do know (and would have recognized), otherwise it would have clicked then.

Police said in 1975, Charles D. Free, 61, escaped a jail in Florida where he was being held on an armed robbery conviction.

Police said Free, who was originally named Jack Hazen, changed his name and Social Security number and wound up in Las Vegas, where he got married, worked in home construction and raised a family.

“(Hazen) came to Vegas 23 to 25 years ago (and) married under the name Free … His family had no idea — didn’t know his prior name, didn’t know his history, just knew him as a hardworking, tax-paying citizen here in the valley,” Sgt. Dave Stansbury said.

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POSTED IN: Miscellaneous, News, People - Interesting Local People