FBI's most-wanted list turns 60

Authorities turn to social networking to help in search

By DANE SCHILLER
HOUSTON CHRONCLE

March 8, 2010, 5:48AM

In 1965, when the Oilers were still new to town and just 1.2 million people lived in Houston, a business-suit-wearing, J. Edgar Hoover-trained rookie FBI agent got the tip of his young career.

The owner of a West Gray bakery called to say one of his bakers looked a lot like a killer on the bureau's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for murdering his wife and mother-in-law in Minnesota.

A typewritten bulletin from headquarters indeed noted the fugitive was an accomplished baker. But it also said he was a cook, handyman, cabinetmaker, janitor, motion-picture projectionist and outdoorsman who liked cowboy movies, malted milks and exploring abandoned mines.

What would seem the longest of long shots turned out to be right on the money.

Without a bullet fired or punch thrown, Allen W. Haugsted was cuffed at his River Oaks Gardens apartment.

Haugsted, who died a free man in 2002, is believed to be the first Ten Most Wanted criminal with a Houston tie, but he wouldn't be the last on the storied list, which turns 60 this month.

Others include Rafael Resendez Ramirez, the notorious “Railroad Killer,” who murdered a doctor at her West University home and was executed in 2006, and Juan Garcia Abrego, the former head of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, who was given multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Caught without a fight

Garcia and Resendez were fugitives in Mexico but, like Haugsted, ended up in FBI hands without a fight.

“It was almost like he was relieved,” retired FBI agent Richard Brock recalled of Haugsted. “I think he was tired of running.”

The bureau boasts a respectable capture rate, as 463 of the 494 listed fugitives have been arrested or located since 1950. Six fugitives have been listed twice. Eight women have made the list.

Fugitives who have landed there include immaculately dressed bank robber Willie Sutton; assassin James Earl Ray, who shot Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; serial killer Ted Bundy; and alleged Mexican drug cartel hit man and gangster Eduardo Ravelo.

Among those long able to evade the law are terrorist Osama bin Laden and Boston gangster James Bulger, who is now 80 years old.

Resendez, the “Railroad Killer,” turned himself in at a bridge over the Rio Grande near downtown El Paso. The man who killed at least a dozen people by smashing their skulls was quietly dropped off by a pick-up truck and met by an FBI agent and a Texas Ranger — precisely on the border line.

His surrender was arranged by his sister during a few days of cell phone calls relaying messages between Resendez and authorities.

“He never said one word in the entire process, from the arrest to the courthouse to the plane trip home” to Houston, recalled agent Kimberly Barkhausen.

“It was a sense of relief,” she recalled of the capture, “I didn't have to worry that night about who he would kill next.”

International spotlight

The Mexican government flew drug kingpin Garcia to Houston in 1996 for judgment after his capture near Monterrey.

He was turned in not by a family member or nosy neighbor, but one of his fellow gangsters looking to get rid of him and cash in on a hefty reward.

Making the Most Wanted list can be a heavy burden for a fugitive.

“The thing for us is the spotlight, the international spotlight that it turns on someone,” said agent Pete Hanna, who took Garcia into custody from Mexican agents at Bush International Airport.

He later helped question the capo as he munched a hamburger at FBI offices.

“As the spotlight shines, it not only shines on that particular person, but his family, associates, what have you,” Hanna said. “People say, ‘As much as I hate to rat this guy out, this guy is causing me a lot of problems.' It is a really big spotlight, and it really does help us out.”

Using social media

Larry Karson, a retired Customs Service agent who is now a criminal justice lecturer at the University of Houston-Downtown, said the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list remains a big hammer but needs to make the most of social media tools.

“The modern FBI is living off the coattails of J. Edgar Hoover's work when it comes to the recognition of the list,” he said of the bureau's flamboyant former director. “I think you'll find a bunch of kids in high school who might not even recognize it anymore, compared to what it was one generation ago or two generations ago.”

To put it to a test, Karson asked students in an entry-level course how many had heard of the FBI's Most Wanted. About half had, he said.

“The real story is, how will the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and the government learn to connect with the population in the 21st century?” he said.

Moving ahead

The bureau has an e-mail distribution list with 150,000 addresses for updates on the list, and it has turned to Facebook and Twitter to augment Web use.

And of course, there is an iPhone app for that. Users can have the faces of the most wanted, as well as top terrorism fugitives and missing children, right in their pockets. They not only can have the images, but also can press a key to immediately e-mail a local FBI office with their GPS location.

“When (posters) were in the post office, it was because a lot of people were in the post office,” said Nancy Beaton, a spokeswoman for NIC Inc., which developed the iPhone application. “These days, people spend a lot of time on their mobile phone, and it is the place to be.”

As for Haugsted and the FBI man who arrested him, they never spoke again. Years ago, Brock did get a letter, written in pencil, that he keeps to this day.

“Sure did like it in Houston. Too bad I was a fugitive,” Haugsted wrote. “I am glad it is over with, as far as running away. ... You can run and hide from the law, but there isn't any escaping yourself.”

dane.schiller@chron.com

nancy@callnancyfurst.com