Tulsa escapee found two decades later

NewsOn6.com

HOUSTON -- A Tulsa man who escaped from an Oklahoma prison over 22 years ago was arrested in Texas late last week, police said.

Members of the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Violent Offenders and Fugitive Task Force took 60-year-old Allen Whitchurch into custody in a Houston suburb on Thursday.

Whitchurch escaped from the John Lilley Correctional Center in Boley, Okla. in April 1986. Whitchurch was serving a 15-year first-degree manslaughter sentence out of Tulsa County when he went missing.

A tip led the U.S. Marshals to Texas.

"Whitchurch was definitely surprised as to how we found him," Deputy U.S. Marshal Alfredo Perez said.

Whitchurch began serving his sentence in 1984.  He now faces escape charges in Oklahoma.