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Costa Rica nabs Ky. slaying suspect
Return to Kentucky could take months

By James Malone
jmalone@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050504/NEWS0104/505040460/1008/NEWS01

A Kentucky man on the FBI's list of most wanted fugitives, charged with killing his elderly aunt and fleeing the country, was captured yesterday in Costa Rica, police said.

Russell Winstead, 40, of Madisonville, is wanted in the January 2003 murder and robbery of 86-year-old Anna Mae Branson, and on a charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Police said they believed Winstead had asked Branson for money before she was stabbed more than 80 times in the basement of her home.

Another Branson nephew, Tom Branson, said that, while law-enforcement agencies had not notified the family, he had received calls from people who had heard news of Winstead's arrest.

"We are all still numb over the whole matter," said Branson, a Madisonville minister. "I am not excited he was captured. I feel very, very sorry for him. We lived a block away from my aunt, and her memory is still very fresh."

The FBI has been told it could take from three to seven months to return Winstead to the United States, said David Beyer, a spokesman in Louisville.

Costa Rica will not extradite fugitives who face the death penalty, officials with its embassy said last year.

Kentucky State Police Trooper Stu Recke said Winstead will be held in a Costa Rican jail until the extradition.

Winstead was captured about two weeks after an FBI agent in Panama went to Costa Rica to work with police there on the case, Beyer said.

According to information the FBI received, Winstead -- using the alias Jeffrey Dan Fish -- was arrested about 1 a.m. playing cards in a casino in San Jose, Costa Rica's capital.

There was no information on whether Winstead resisted or that he was with anyone else at the time, Beyer said.

Police said Winstead, a civil engineer, hid in Costa Rica shortly after fleeing the United States in mid-2003, after he failed to show up for a hearing in the Hopkins County murder case.

Last year, authorities charged Winstead's father, Earl, with wiring money to his son in Costa Rica.

Earl Winstead received probation after pleading guilty to seven counts of hindering apprehension and prosecution.