Fugitive Found After 38 Years, Running a Wedding Chapel

The Columbia, Missouri Tribune (with a big hat tip to KC Crime Blog) has this incredible story of Frank Dryman a convicted murder who disappeared off of parole for 38 years to turn up in Pinal County, Arizona running a wedding chapel under the name, Victor Houston.  Apparently Dryman/Houston had so assimilated into Arizona society he befriended severeal Pinal County Sheriffs over the years. 

Dryman had orginally been sentenced to death by hanging in Montana for shooting the 1955 shooting death of Clarence Pellett.  Dryman a hitchhiker at the time of the killing had been picked up in a blizzard by Pellett who Dryman shot in the back six or seven times.  The Montana death sentenced was changed to life in prison and after 15 years Dryman was out on parole.  In 1972 Dryman vanished "into thin air," only to turn up in 2010 happily marrying Arizona couples.  Clem Pellet a surgeon in Washington state, and the murder victim's grandson, hired a private detective to solve the family mystery which led to the recent capture of the long time fugitive.

Dryman was 16 at the time of the crime, he's 78 now.  Here's link to the Arizona account of the recent arrest.