John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch, the Arizona prison escapee and his alleged accomplice, were arrested at a campground last night just some 280 miles east of the prison where McClusky escaped last month.
Last night a forest ranger spotted what he thought was an unattended fire at a campsite on the edge of the Apache and Sitgreaves National Forests in Springerville, Arizona. When he went to investigate he spotted a car backed into some trees and copied the plate number. The license plate matched the description of a car that was stolen in New Mexico near where a couple was recently murdered.
McCluskey and Welch are suspected of the killing the couple. Their bodies were found in a burned out camper earlier this month.
A SWAT team was called to the campsite where they arrested McClusky and Welch.
Welch, who is McCluskey’s cousin and lover, allegedly helped he and two other inmates escape from an Arizona state prison in northwest Arizona by throwing wire cutters over the fence. The couple had evaded capture in at least six states. The other two escapees were captured earlier this month.
The prison was found to have a badly defective alarm system that went off so often it is often ignored. The perimeter post was unstaffed and an outside dormitory door had been propped open with a rock at the time of the escape. A warden and a security official resigned their posts at the prison last week.