Official: Man, 90, escaped jail in 1970 just by walking away

PHILADELPHIA – An official says a 90-year-old man indicted on fraud charges spent 40 years on the lam after escaping from a Maryland jail in 1970 simply by walking away.

According to an indictment unsealed Tuesday in Philadelphia, William Lewis is accused of collecting more than $450,000 in retirement benefits that he wasn’t entitled to from 1991 to March 2017.

Gerard Shields, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety, says Lewis was convicted in Wicomico (wy-COH’-mih-coh) County of breaking and entering and larceny and was sentenced to three years in jail in 1969. He escaped the next year from the Poplar Hill Pre-Release Unit, a facility for low-risk offenders.

Shields says while technically Lewis escaped, “he didn’t scale fences or barbed wire. He simply walked away.”