Convicted killer FRANK FRESHWATERS spent an amazing 56 years on the lam after escaping from jail – and then tempted fate by taking a job that put him back behind bars!
“He went around to prisons, delivering books,” Shirl Cheetham – a 34-year-old mother of two who was a close friend – told The National ENQUIRER in an exclusive interview.
“I knew he delivered books to prisons, but I didn’t know he’d been in one!”
Cheetham – who has set up a legal defense for Freshwaters – and others interviewed by The ENQUIRER knew the 79-year-old ex-con as “William Cox,” the alias he used to elude capture for over five decades.
He was finally arrested on May 4 in a dilapidated trailer near Melbourne, Fla.
At the time, he was driving a truck for a government agency that ran a prison literacy project.
Back in 1957, he’d pleaded guilty to manslaughter for running over and killing Eugene Flynt, 24, in Akron, Ohio.
Flynt’s son Richard was stunned to learn a task force of fugitive hunters had collared the outlaw that brutally killed his father.
“It came as a complete surprise!” Flynt, 61, told The ENQUIRER. “I didn’t even know they were looking for him!”
Freshwaters was given probation and a suspended 1- to 20-year prison sentence for his crime. But he violated probation, and was sent to the infamous Ohio State Reformatory where the 1994 movie “The Shawshank Redemption” was filmed.
He was later moved to the less secure Sandusky Honor Farm, and escaped in 1959.
Before his capture, he lived in a trailer while working as the caretaker of a 160-acre wooded property.
The land was owned by the parents of Florida State Senator Thad Altman – who considered him “trustworthy.”
After his arrest, Altman told The ENQUIRER: “I was shocked! My family and I just can’t believe it.”
Freshwaters was so comfortable in his double life that he even attended the 2012 wedding of a longtime friend.
Photos of him dancing with the bride and serenading guests with a guitar were posted online.
Freshwaters’ late wife worked for the county school district, and both were well-liked churchgoers, Altman said.
Wheelchair-bound with his hair in a ponytail, Freshwaters waived extradition and will be returned to Ohio on escape charges.
Meanwhile, Richard admits that in his late teens he thought about tracking down his father’s killer to “shoot ’em with a .45.”
But Flynt, who is disabled and homebound with bone disease, has mellowed with age.
“My father didn’t get a chance to live his life,” Richard told The ENQUIRER. “This guy lived a long life, and even though he is 79 and in a wheelchair, I feel he should serve time in jail.”
