SALT LAKE CITY: Troy James Knapp was dodging authorities, again.
The fugitive with a fondness for drinks and a dislike of living near people had been wanted for a string of break-ins for years at cabins in Utah’s mountains. With each near miss, each wanted poster and each threatening note left behind for law enforcement, the legend of him only grew.
Knapp survived by holing up inside the cabins, sleeping in the owners’ beds, eating their food and listening to their AM radio for updates on the manhunt. And then, authorities say, he would take off, stealing items such as guns and high-end camping equipment and vanishing into the woods where he lived off dandelions and wild game.
Over Easter weekend, authorities were on his trail, again.
By Tuesday, his life on the lam came to an end, done in by an educated guess by searchers who had grown to know his tendencies, the tracks he left with his snowshoes and the sounds of him chopping wood outside a cabin near a mountain reservoir.
A team of 14 officers approached him on snowshoes — the only way to quietly sneak up on him — and called in reinforcements to help corner the bearded and camouflage-clad fugitive, a trim 45-year-old standing 5-foot-8.
Now in police custody, Knapp is telling authorities how he managed to evade them for so long across a mountainous region stretching for 180 miles. “He really has a fascinating story to tell, and right now he’s willing to tell it,” Sanpete County Sheriff Brian Nielson said.
Knapp, born in Saginaw, Michigan, got into trouble with the law early. As a teenager, he was convicted of breaking and entering, passing bad cheques and unlawful flight from authorities, according to court records. His most serious offence, an arrest for felony assault in Michigan, was reduced in 1994 to a charge of malicious destruction of property after he agreed to plead guilty.
“He says, ‘I don’t hate people. I just don’t like living with them,’” Sevier County Sheriff Nathan Sheriff Curtis said.
With no known occupation, Knapp drifted across the country and ended up in prison in California for burglary. He fell off the radar in 2004 when he “went on the run” while on parole, said Bobby Haase, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
By 2007, Utah authorities began investigating a string of cabin burglaries they believed were tied to one person. It wasn’t until early 2012 that they identified Knapp as the suspect from cabin surveillance photos and fingerprints lifted from one cabin. AP
