DNA evidence reveals family man in Australia was teenage killer who escaped Nebraska jail [View all]

Source: The Guardian

DNA evidence reveals family man in Australia was teenage killer who escaped Nebraska jail

William Leslie Arnold killed his parents aged 16 in 1957 and escaped prison ten years later, mystifying authorities until now

Edward Helmore
Sun 14 May 2023 11.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 14 May 2023 18.12 BST

William Leslie Arnold was just 16 years old in 1958 when he killed his parents and buried them in the backyard after they refused to let him borrow the family car to take his girlfriend to a drive-in movie showing of The Undead.

Arnold went about his life in and around Omaha, Nebraska, telling everyone – even family members – that his parents had taken a trip. Two weeks later he was arrested, confessed to the killings and led investigators to his parents’ makeshift gravesite.

The following year he was sentenced to two life sentences in the Nebraska state penitentiary. And that – most people expected – should have been that.

But by the time Arnold died in 2010 in Brisbane, Australia, his life had taken a series of very unexpected turns. For one, he’d escaped prison in 1967, in what the prison warden said was one of the “cleanest” escapes in his experience, and then gone on the run for half a century.

Last week, the US Marshals Service announced that he died, aged 67, not as William Arnold but under the alias of John Vincent Damon. ...

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/14/william-leslie-arnold-australia-nebraska-killed-parents-jailbreak

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