Glen Stewart Godwin

Infobox FBI Ten Most Wanted
name = Glen Stewart Godwin


crime = Unlawful Flight to Avoid Confinement - Murder, Escape
birth_date = birth date and age|1958|6|26
death_date =
death_place =
added_date = December 7 1996
caught_date =
remove_date =
number = 447
status =

Glen Stewart Godwin (born June 26, 1958) is a fugitive and convicted murderer who was added to the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on December 7, 1996, nine years after he escaped from Folsom Prison in California where he was serving a 25-year-to-life sentence. He replaced O'Neil Vassell on the list.

Biography

In 1980, Godwin, then 22, was living near Palm Springs, California, working as a self-employed tool salesman and had no known criminal past when he first came to the attention of police.

He and a roommate planned a scheme to rob a pilot friend of theirs who was known to carry large sums of cash because of his sideline job of drug running. Godwin and his pal, Frank Soto, lured 26-year-old Kim Robert LeValley back to their condominium where Soto held him and Godwin stabbed the man to death. Soto would later turn state's witness and testify that Godwin stabbed LeValley 28 times. Two other friends helped the killers dispose of the body by trying to blow it up in LeValley's car.

The judge in the case, however, said the evidence against Godwin was overwhelming.Like Godwin, in 1981, despite his testimony against his coconspirator, Soto received a 25-to-life term.

Godwin quietly served his sentence until 1987 when he was transferred from Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy, California to the 100-year-old Folsom Prison for reportedly plotting an escape.

It took five months for Godwin to figure a way out of Folsom. He needed help from the outside -- the wife he married while behind bars and Lorenz Karlic, a career criminal he met in Deuel who had subsequently been released. Shelly Godwin and/or Karlic sawed through a series of bars in a drainage tile that led from inside the prison walls to the nearby American River.

On the morning of July 5, 1987, Godwin dropped through a manhole and crawled 1,000-feet through the pitch black drain, shed his prison uniform for civilian clothes left by his accomplices, got into an inflatable rubber raft and paddled to freedom. He got a three-hour head start before guards noticed he was gone.

Godwin managed to cross the border into Mexico where he began a new life as a cocaine dealer. He was less than successful, because in 1991, Glen was arrested by Mexican authorities and sentenced to 27 years in a Mexican prison for trafficking. A routine communication between Mexican and American authorities revealed that the man serving the long stretch in Guadalajara as Stewart Carrerra was actually Glen Stewart Godwin. The Americans began extradition proceedings.

While in prison in Mexico, as a favor to a Mexican drug gang, he allegedly killed an informer, and as a result the Mexican authorities halted the extradition process.In September 1991, Glen Godwin managed to escape the Mexican jail and disappeared once again.

He was reportedly seen once in California in 1997, but managed to elude the FBI, which had placed him on its Most Wanted List of fugitives the year before.

He is currently believed to be involved in the illicit drug trade somewhere in Latin America. He is believed to be armed and extremely dangerous, and is an obvious flight risk. The FBI offers a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to Godwin's capture.

External links

* [http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/godwin.htm Godwin's FBI Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitive Alert]
* [http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=24465 Godwin's profile on "America's Most Wanted"]