Posted on 05/02/2008 9:46:50 AM PDT by Santa Fe_Conservative
SANTEE, California (AP) -- Marie Walsh kept a low profile for 32 years, trying to escape her past life as Susan LeFevre.
She raised three children with her husband of 23 years, Alan, who never knew she was using an assumed identity. Authorities wanted her for escaping from a Detroit prison a year into a maximum 20-year sentence on heroin charges.
Now, LeFevre, 53, is in jail awaiting extradition from California to Michigan on an escape warrant.
She was arrested April 24 outside her home in San Diego's posh Carmel Valley area, wearing a sweat suit and driving a black Lexus SUV. Authorities say her cover was blown by an anonymous caller who tipped Michigan authorities to her new name.
"It's been a secret no one knew for so long, and now everyone knows," LeFevre said in an interview Wednesday at Las Colinas Detention Facility in Santee, a San Diego suburb. "I hope there's some mercy."
LeFevre, who grew up the second of five children, was just 19 when she was arrested during an undercover drug operation in Thomas Township, outside Saginaw, Michigan, in 1974. She said she got into drugs after graduating from her Catholic high school because she was despondent over the death of her teenage sweetheart in the Vietnam War.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Her boyfriend did the sale. He took her with him once and she was arrested that time.
You have to prove that she did not make up a number that was someone’s who had died.
Until you can prove that, you are making false accusations.
At this point, it’s clear that a pretty hefty fine is on order.
I don’t see how justice is served by sending her to prison. Maybe a year of house arrest, a stiff ($100K) fine, and five years probation.
34 years ago the drug law were much more strict and I find it odd that she got 20 years on a plea deal.
I’m a hang ‘em high kinda guy too, but your position of sending her to jail to serve the whole nut, plus time for escape does not make sense.
Yeah, right, I’m a racist.
And I don’t have to advocate leniency for a 19 year old black arrested for selling drugs. Go to any big city, you’ll see that the vast majority of those dealers are NOT behind bars. There’s not enough prison space.
I see you've already started on the screenplay for her movie deal. She's sort of like the remake of The Fugitive, eh? She's innocent and needed to escape to prove her innocence against the corrupt cops who set her up!
Wait a sec.
Oh, that's right. She confessed to dealing heroin in open court.
But, now that I’ve been exposed to the wisdom displayed be a few here that obviously have a much greater handle on this justice thingy, I must confess my naivete’ and admit I was wrong. Yes, she should be sent back to serve 20 years plus some more time for escaping.
Would you suggest instituting a general policy that would reduce the sentence of any felon who was clever enough to escape? That would create some fascinating incentives.
We need to think of some appropriate punishment for her husband and children, too. I’m sure they are just as evil as she is.
While I agree that your sarcasm was so painfully unfunny that you needed to switch up your rhetorical strategy mid-post, I'm not sure self-parody was the right way to go.
I think this also needs much more publicity if they are all to be sufficiently embarrassed and humiliated.
Ah yes - much like her heroin conviction, the adverse publicity she is now receiving is also someone else's fault, apparently.
Would you suggest a second law, imposing a media blackout to help escaped felons avoid publicity?
There, now I feel so much holier than thou.
The sad aspect of this last sentence is that it was probably originally intended as sarcasm.
Guess it’s time to celebrate another great victory in the ever-more-worthwhile War on Drugs.
I’ll say no more about it, (don’t need to) because, I really don’t know you except for what you’ve said here, so I’ll just look forward to never getting to know you.
No one has to prove a negative.
In any case, the chances of someone randomly inventing an algorithmically valid SSN are astronomical in and of themselves.
The chances of someone inventing an algorithmically valid SSN that has legally been issued are even greater.
The chances of someone inventing an algorithmically valid SSN that has legally been issued and that matches their own demographic description are even greater than that.
And, finally, the chances of someone inventing an algorithmically valid SSN matching their own demographic description that has legally been issued and which belonged to a person who conveniently died at the right time - a person whose death, moreover, had not been reported to the SSA - is even more astronomical.
Until you can prove that, you are making false accusations.
It can only be considered a false accusation by people who are very bad at math.
Mmmm, have to say not sure how I feel about this one. Lots of resources spent on punishing someone for a drug charge. Yes, I know it is for escape. I just can’t help wondering why they could find her but not all of the illegals in the area.
I cannot imagine what that particular prison was like for her.
If her story is true, I would commute her sentence as time served in full. She and her family suffered all this time for a ridiculously long sentence on a drug conviction.
It's also vaguely reminiscent of the ending of Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis.
She isn't going to have any judge on the original sentence. Any right to appeal is well beyond the statute of limitations.
Her best shot is to hope for a pardon or commutation of sentence from Gov. Jenny.
I thought she was mourning his untimely death in Viet Nam. She said that too.
I’m not saying that she should have to serve the entire original sentence. I would say that some leniency would be fair at the first possible time she is eligible.
However, I would not agree with leniency for any penalty for the escape. She should have to serve the time for that. She had ample time to get a good lawyer and come clean about that.
It would be a bad precedent to let that go unpunished, even rewarded as would be in her case.
That's not the sentence she received in a court of law.
I don’t see how justice is served by sending her to prison.
That was her sentence. Justice is served by convicts serving their sentences according the law, not by giving special favors to people who break even more laws.
Maybe a year of house arrest, a stiff ($100K) fine, and five years probation.
Perhaps if she successfully challenges her original sentencing, and is then resentenced, the new sentence might reflect your recommendation.
But for now, she needs to go to prison.
34 years ago the drug law were much more strict and I find it odd that she got 20 years on a plea deal.
I'm not sure how much more strict they were back then. In NY, if you deal the right amount of heroin, you will do 10-20. I'm not sure about MI then and now.
As far as whether there was a plea deal, judges have the right to reject any plea deals. And plea deals may fall apart if the defendant turns out to have been lying about the extent of her crimes.
I’m a hang ‘em high kinda guy too, but your position of sending her to jail to serve the whole nut, plus time for escape does not make sense.
If she had shown any remorse at all, rather than throwing a dead man and her parents under the bus and then lying about how she obtained her fake identity (essentially by graverobbing), then I would see the wisdom of a resentencing. But her comments make it clear that she sees herself as a victim and not as an undeservedly fortunate felon.
I will point out that if she really believed that her sentence was a legitimate miscarriage of justice, then she was free to appeal and she was also able to apply for parole.
If she had played her cards right and displayed exemplary behavior in prison, she would likely have been able to get out of prison after two or three years - presuming her story is just as it she reports its circumstances to be.
What boggles my mind is that she was dealing heroin on the street and still felt that she was basically guaranteed probation.
In other words: when out of arguments, make it personal.
An oddly common attitude among FReepers.
And we know this how? Because she said so?
As YankeeGirl points out, she says at one point that she got into heroin because of a boyfriend/love interest who died in Vietnam.
Now apparently her story is also that she got into heroin because of a new boyfriend who duped her.
The two stories are rather contradictory.
In one she is deliberately involved in heroin dur to grief. In the other she is unwittingly caught up in heroin because of her new boyfriend.
I wonder what the court transcripts and the witnesses reveal that she isn't revealing.
The boyfriend who died in Vietnam was dead when she experimented with drugs wa datiing a young man who sold drugs to the undercover cop. She was with him when he made a sale, but she did not do the sale.
I think she should get a fine....period. I also think she should have had probation instead of prison, which she was promised would happen if she would plea bargain. They lied to her, and her parents also believed that she would only get probation if she plea bargained.
She apparently has not been involved in drugs all these years and has lived clean.
Both are plausible.
I day practice ‘catch and release” on this one, and go find some practicing criminals to prosecute.
And incredibly self-serving.
The story about the boyfriend bringing her along to his deal is extremely fishy.
If that truly was the extent of her involvement, law enforcement SOP would be to tell her that if she testified against her boyfriend then they would let her plead guilty to lesser charges.
After all, in the described circumstances, the whole point would be to threaten the boyfriend with a 20 year sentence guaranteed by his girlfriend's testimony unless he gave up the name of his supplier.
But she wound up pleading guilty in court to a very serious charge which she is now claiming she wasn't guilty of.
Odd that.
I day practice ‘catch and release” on this one, and go find some practicing criminals to prosecute.
She's not being prosecuted. She was already prosecuted years ago. She is now being remanded.
Frankly, I don’t believe either story. The only documentation I have seen referenced is the police file from the undercover operation which had her pegged as substantial heroin dealer.
She also claimed she was encouraged to take a plea bargain by her family to spare them the embarrassment of a trial. (Another story, like the one about being given bad advice by counsel, and being duped by the DA) Sounds more like they felt an acquittal at a jury trial was unlikely.
Maybe, just maybe, she was guilty as charged?
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