Richard Lee McNair

Bordelon remained with the Ball Police department for the rest of his life, eventually becoming assistant police chief before his death in 2015 at the age of 51.

Christopher later compiled his correspondence, conducted additional research on the story, and eventually produced a book on McNair, The Man Who Mailed Himself Out of Jail. It was released via Amazon.com on June 20, 2013. The book is a follow-up to "The Running Man" series, published by The Tribune newspaper of Campbellton, New Brunswick, in 2009.

The next day, Constable Stephane Gagnon, a six-week rookie, spotted McNair's van by chance in downtown Campbellton, and pursued it. Following a low-speed car chase and a subsequent foot chase, McNair was successfully arrested by Gagnon with the help of his field coach, Constable Nelson Lévesque. In October 2008, the US-based International Association of Chiefs of Police awarded Melanson the Looking Beyond the Licence Plate Grand Prize for his role in apprehending McNair. McNair himself described his capture as simply the product of bad luck: as he put it, it was "just one of those days." McNair was transferred to the Atlantic Institution, a Canadian federal maximum security penitentiary in Renous, New Brunswick, while awaiting extradition to the United States.

In 2008, Byron Christopher, a crime reporter from the same New Brunswick town where McNair was captured, began a correspondence with McNair via mail. In his first letter, Christopher included a picture that he had taken of the town, taken near the place that McNair was arrested. He told McNair that he hoped the Campbellton Chamber of Commerce would write a check to McNair for all the publicity he had brought to the town, and wrote to McNair about the recent World Series and federal election. Christopher included three American dollars in order to cover the cost of paper and postage. The prison returned his money.

In 2007, McNair travelled to eastern Canada. He drove through the Laurentian Highlands in Quebec, where he enjoyed mountain biking. He spent a lot of time around Lac Saint-Jean. McNair nearly attempted to cross back into the United States again at Derby Line, Vermont, but the high security on the American side convinced him that attempting to cross back would be too risky. He eventually travelled through Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Saint John, New Brunswick. McNair spent about two months in Fredericton, New Brunswick, before he was again confronted by police.

On October 24, 2007, near Nash Creek, New Brunswick, off-duty RCMP constable Dan Melanson spotted an expensive-looking white cube van with "crappy looking" tinted rear windows and an Ontario license plate. Suspecting that the van was stolen, and/or being used to smuggle alcohol or cigarettes, Melanson noted the plate number and that the van was headed to Campbellton, a nearby city. Melanson did not attempt to apprehend McNair, but his report alerted other RCMP in Campbellton of the presence of McNair's vehicle. (McNair had in fact tinted the windows himself in a London, Ontario park.)

After McNair's arrest, he escaped three times from three different institutions using various creative methods. On his first attempt, he used lip balm to squeeze out of a pair of handcuffs. He escaped a second time by crawling through a ventilation duct. In his last escape from a federal prison in April 2006, he mailed himself out of prison in a crate and successfully convinced a police officer he was not the prison escapee but actually a jogger. This resulted in his mugshot being featured a dozen times on the TV show America's Most Wanted, and made him one of the top fifteen fugitives wanted by US Marshals. McNair traveled to Canada twice in order to evade capture, traveling across the country for over a year before being apprehended in a random police check. Much of what the public knows about McNair's escape and his time as a fugitive is through McNair's prison correspondence with a Canadian journalist, Byron Christopher.

On April 5, 2006, McNair escaped from a United States Penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana. McNair's duties in prison included work in a manufacturing area, where he would repair old, torn mailbags. He held this position for several months, throughout which McNair plotted his escape. McNair escaped by hiding himself in a specially-constructed "escape pod" (which included a breathing tube), which was buried under a pile of mailbags. The pallet was shrink-wrapped and forklifted to a nearby warehouse outside of the prison fence. After prison staff delivered McNair's pallet and went for lunch, McNair cut himself out of his "escape pod" and walked through the unsecured area to freedom. Federal investigators believed that McNair must have received help from other inmates to escape, but McNair has always maintained that he acted alone.

On April 13, 2006, US Marshals added McNair to their 15 Most Wanted list. They noted that McNair was the first prisoner to escape from a federal prison since 1991.

Later that April, about two weeks after his escape, McNair successfully crossed into British Columbia from Blaine, Washington. On April 28, 2006, RCMP in Penticton, British Columbia, confronted McNair while investigating a stolen car that he was driving, which was parked at a local beach. The officers asked McNair to step out of the car to be questioned, which he did, but he ran across a nearby field and outran the officers soon after being confronted. The police impounded the car, but did not realize the identity of McNair until two days later, when one of the officers recognized him from an episode of America's Most Wanted. Subsequent investigation found a digital camera full of self-portraits, which police determined were probably for the purpose of producing a fake ID. When authorities examined the car, they found McNair's fingerprints, confirming that he was in Canada.

After escaping arrest in Penticton, McNair rode a bike to Kelowna. Because it took several days for the police to confirm his identity, it was relatively easy for McNair to escape the area. In May 2006, McNair traveled back to the United States, when he drove a Subaru Outback from Vernon, British Columbia, to Blaine, Washington. McNair then traveled across the United States and eventually crossed back into Canada from Minnesota. After arriving back in Canada, McNair traveled through southern Ontario, then traveled west, to Vancouver.

On April 8, 2006, three days after McNair's escape, America's Most Wanted ran its first profile of McNair. The program would go on to detail McNair a total of twelve times on television, and nine times on radio. The last time McNair was featured was November 24, 2007, a month after his recapture. Over the period of McNair's time in Canada, Canadian viewers made over 50 reports to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), confirming that the fugitive had been seen north of the border.

Throughout his time as a fugitive, McNair tracked his own story on the internet. After his recapture, McNair commented that the ongoing coverage of him was "for the most part true". Louisiana Marshal Glenn Belgard attempted to capture McNair online with the help of a criminal profiler. McNair suspected that the Louisiana police had attempted to contact him by posing as a woman online, who said that "she would like to hide [McNair] in her basement." McNair was surprised by how much the media coverage focused on him, especially the eleven-page article that appeared in The New Yorker, written by Mark Singer, on October 9, 2006.

In October 1992, McNair escaped with two other prisoners from the North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck, North Dakota, by crawling through a ventilation duct. One of the prisoners who escaped with McNair was apprehended within hours, and the other within days. After his escape, McNair grew out his hair and dyed it blonde in an attempt to disguise himself. Much of his time on the run was spent roaming the United States in stolen cars. McNair remained free for ten months, until he was eventually arrested in Grand Island, Nebraska, in 1993. After his second recapture, the North Dakota Department of Corrections deemed McNair a problem inmate, and arranged his transfer through the Interstate Compact to Minnesota Correctional Facility – Oak Park Heights. After a number of years at this facility, and realizing he would not be able to escape, McNair participated in a sit-down strike that caused his return to North Dakota, and his later transfer to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He was assigned to the maximum security United States Penitentiary, Florence High which is next to - but distinct from - ADX Florence. Again realizing that escape would be unlikely, he arranged a transfer to United States Penitentiary, Pollock on the grounds that this was marginally closer to his parents' home in Oklahoma.

McNair's first escape attempt occurred at the Minot municipal police station in 1988, shortly after he had been arrested. McNair's first period as a fugitive lasted only a few hours, after which McNair was quickly recaptured. After his initial arrest, McNair was handcuffed to a chair and left in a room with three detectives. McNair used lip balm, which he had in his pocket, as a lubricant to squeeze his hands free from the handcuffs. McNair then led police on a chase on foot through the town, eventually being chased up a three-flight stairway in an effort to evade capture. After becoming surrounded by police on the roof of a three-story building downtown, McNair attempted to jump to a tree branch to escape arrest, but the branch broke. McNair landed on the ground and hurt his back, after which he was easily apprehended. After McNair was released from the hospital, he was moved to the Ward County Jail in Minot. In February 1988, sheriff's deputies discovered another escape attempt when, after moving McNair to another cell, they found two cinder blocks partially chiseled out from the cell in which he was being held.

In November 1987, while attempting a burglary in Minot, North Dakota, McNair was surprised by two men and murdered one of them. McNair's murder of Jerry Thies occurred at a grain elevator operated by the Farmers Union Elevator Co. while McNair was a sergeant posted at the nearby Minot Air Force Base. A second man was shot four times, but survived. When the police called McNair in for questioning, McNair surrendered a concealed handgun. He was later sentenced to two life sentences for murder and attempted murder, and a thirty-year prison sentence for burglary.

Richard Lee McNair (born December 19, 1958) is a convicted murderer known for his ability to escape and elude capture. In 1987, McNair murdered one man and shot a second man four times during a botched robbery. He is currently serving two terms of life imprisonment for these crimes including escaping from prison.