Caught in Kentucky

William Craig Garrett knew his freedom was on borrowed time, and it ended last week.

U.S. Marshals arrested the Michigan man on Friday in Kentucky, says his sister, Kim Waterhouse, who lives in the southeastern Michigan town of Petersburg.

"We don't know how they found him," she says.

Garrett was convicted in the 1995 armed robbery of an 86-year-old Plymouth Township woman in her home and sentenced to 15 to 30 years. This rag wrote about his flight from the law last week ("On the run," Sept. 26). It was, you might say, a captivating story. At least that's how it turned out.

In 1999, then-Wayne County Circuit Judge Sean Cox ordered a new trial for Garrett based on alibi witness testimony that wasn't presented at his original trial. The new witness — as did five others — said Garrett was in Hazel Park at the time of the attack. Cox also ordered Garrett could remain free while legal issues were being wrangled over in higher courts.

"The court is of the opinion that this case presents substantial questions of law and fact and invites further appellate review of the significant issues," Cox wrote in one of his opinions in the case.

The Michigan Court of Appeals disagreed with Cox and overturned his order for a new trial as well as refusing other pending appeals. When the Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 2003, Garrett was supposed to return to custody.

But he remained on the run, refusing to turn himself in for a crime he says he did not commit.

On Friday, U.S. Marshals and local police found Garrett at an apartment he rented in Kentucky with his wife, says Gale Garrett, his mother. He's currently in the Laurel County Detention Center in London, Ky.

"He doesn't plan on fighting extradition," his mother says.

It's unclear what remaining legal course Garrett may have. He currently doesn't have an attorney, his mother says. Maria Miller, spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, says she doesn't have a date for Garrett's return to Michigan.