Escaped Mich. killer back behind bars, faces new charges

LaPorte County, Ind. - A convicted four-time killer who escaped from a Michigan prison Sunday, prompting a multi-state manhunt, is facing new charges now that he’s back behind bars.

Wearing a white prison kitchen suit that blended in with the snow, authorities said Michael David Elliot escaped from the Ionia Correctional Facility through two perimeter fences, carjacked a woman and fled in her Jeep.

The woman was able to escape when they stopped for gas at a gas station in Middlebury, Indiana, roughly 100 miles southwest of Ionia near the Indiana-Michigan state line. Authorities later discovered the Jeep abandoned nearby.

Elliot, 40, was arrested Monday night in LaPorte County, Ind., more than 150 miles from the prison, after a deputy there spotted a stolen car and pulled over the driver after a short chase, reports CBS affiliate WWMT.

Elliot has now been charged with kidnapping, carjacking and escape. He had already been serving a life term without the possibility of parole in the murders of four people in Michigan.

WWMT spoke with the deputy who arrested the convicted killer, who said he didn’t realize at first that the man driving the stolen car was Elliot.

Deputy Slawek Czupryna told the station he noticed a car that had been reported stolen. The car reportedly sped away when he tried to make a stop, but the driver stopped after a short chase.

When he and a fellow deputy  handcuffed the driver, he identified himself as the escaped murderer, reports the station.

 "We asked him who he was and that was when he told is he was Michael Elliot, that he was the one that escaped from Michigan and we kind of looked at each other, me and Deputy Wright, and we couldn't believe it. We actually had him," Czupryna told the station.

Deputy Jeff Wright told the station he wasn’t expecting to come across Elliot since authorities were searching the area near where the Jeep was found abandoned in Shipshewana, more than 60 miles away.

“Once he told me who he was it was a bit of a shock that he was out this way but also a bit of a relief that he was in custody and everything went well, nobody got hurt. Our guys are all safe and we're all going home in one piece," Wright told the station.

Police say Elliot was discovered missing from the central Michigan prison around 9:30 p.m. Sunday, according to the state Department of Corrections. WWMT reports he escaped several hours earlier, between 6 and 7 p.m.

Elliot was wearing a white prison kitchen suit when he escaped, reports the station, though he did not work in the kitchen. Officers reportedly suspect the outfit may have aided in his escape.

From the prison yard, "it appears that he created a hole at the bottom of the two perimeter fences of the correctional facility and then crawled through those holes," Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said in an email.

Once outside the prison, Elliot abducted a woman in Ionia using a knife or box cutter and drove with her in her Jeep to the gas station in northern Indiana.

The LaGrange County Sheriff's Department said she was able to call 911 from a concealed cellphone while he was pumping gas.

The woman ran to a restroom where she locked herself inside. Elliot knocked on the door, but she stayed inside until police officers arrived. She wasn't harmed, officials said at a news conference.

The woman told police that he said he wanted to get as far from the Michigan prison as possible.

"We had dog teams. We had a helicopter from the state police," Department of Corrections Director Dan Heyns said. "The response was good but he'd left the area by the time we were mobilized totally 100 percent. It didn't take him long to get down to Indiana.”

Nothing in his record suggested he might escape, Heyns said.

"He had no assistance. This was an entirely one-man operation," the prisons chief said.

Elliot was serving life behind bars for fatally shooting four people and burning down their Gladwin County house in 1993 when he was 20 years old, according to court records. Elliot and his accomplices were trying to steal money from a drug dealer, police said.

He was arrested a few days later in possession of a gun that was tied to the slayings. One of Elliot's co-defendants testified against him, saying he laughed about shooting the victims in the head.

Elliot was convicted of first-degree murder in 1994 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

During a news conference, Indiana State Police told the station they had officers from departments all over the state working together to track Elliot down.

"It's a big sigh of relief,” said Sgt. Ron Galaviz of the Indiana State Police. “It's a big weight off of our shoulders, because people were walking around here on pins and needles all day. It's not every day that a convicted killer escapes prison and makes his or her way to small town USA.”

Elliot is reportedly being extradited back to Michigan.