Police capture wanted couple in Las Vegas - Las Vegas Sun Newspaper

Excerpt

About six weeks later, the two are believed to have stolen a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee and left abducted salesman Gil Reeves tied to a tree in rural Wheeler County.

Wednesday, June 17, 1998 | 11:40 a.m.

Jimmie Neal Hays, 29, and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Shannon Marie Ludington, had been running from the law since February, when Lubbock Sheriff's Deputy Gerry Nelson was robbed at gunpoint in his home.

About six weeks later, the two are believed to have stolen a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee and left abducted salesman Gil Reeves tied to a tree in rural Wheeler County.

After the duo was featured on an April 18 episode of America's Most Wanted, the show received 89 viewer tips.

But the couple remained free until Hays was stopped Friday night for driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee with expired Kansas license plates, Las Vegas police Sgt. William Minor said.

Local authorities had worried that the couple might be killed in the course of their brazen getaways.

"For a bad situation," Carson County Sheriff Loren Brand said from the couple's hometown of Panhandle, "this was a best-case scenario."

Brand, who said that officers in three counties are puzzled about how the couple eluded the law for so long, believes more crimes may be attributed to the pair in the wake of the arrests.

"They had to be doing something to support themselves," he said. "The main thing no one can figure is how they did it. They're just the luckiest damn couple. Hays wasn't what you'd call a sophisticated criminal."

Because Lubbock, Potter and Wheeler counties have claims to the fugitives, the Texas Rangers in Amarillo are coordinating their retrieval. The earliest the two would return to Texas is Friday. The process could take longer if they fight extradition procedures.

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