A SEX offender who faked his own death almost 16 years ago to escape police has finally been caught up with.
Officers arrested Gary Wayne Howard at a property in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Thursday.
In 2010, the Florida pervert faked a suicide after he was found guilty of 22 counts of child pornography possession in Pinellas County, Florida.
The 2007 conviction would have forced Howard, now 74, to register as a sex offender for life – a fate he tried to avoid with his faked death.
US Marshals who hauled him in this week after years on the lam, say he abandoned a rental car near Mauzy Lake in Morganfield, Kentucky, to stage a suicide.
It was a “deliberate attempt by Howard to stage his own death to appear as a suicide,” they said.
He violated his probation and headed for Indiana.
Pinellas County issued a warrant for his arrest in March 2011 after failing to register as a sex offender.
Detectives tracked him down this week after they learned he had a “significant number of relatives” in the Hoosier State.
They said Howard could “depend on them to help him stay off the grid”.
He was arrested after surveillance revealed Howard was living at a house in Irvington.
The Florida creep was cuffed the moment he stepped out onto the front porch, but not without making a chilling admission to cops.
“I had hoped to be dead before you caught up with me,” he told agents, according to Fox News affiliate WXIN.
He was booked into the Vanderburgh County Jail around 11 am and he will finally face justice.
Howard is set to be extradited to Florida where he faces jail time for violating his probation and 32 charges of failing to register as a sex offender.
Officials added that in Indiana, he will be facing an “Adam Walsh prosecution case”.
This is a prosecution that can be made toward individuals who fail to register as sex offenders, putting children in danger.
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 was signed into law to protect children from sexual exploitation, violent crime, child abuse and child pornography.
Walsh was six years old when he was abducted from a shopping mall in Florida and murdered in 1981.
“This arrest exemplifies the tenacity and determination of Deputy US Marshals and our task force partners to bring every fugitive to Justice,” William Berger Sr., US Marshal for the Middle District of Florida said.
“You can run, you can hide, but law enforcement never stops hunting those who defy it – justice has a way of catching up to those who run from it,” Berger said.
