Fugitives: An Act of Forgiveness

By NANCY GIBBS

And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison . . . And his chains fell off from his hands.

-- Acts 12: 7

It was no secret that Leroy ("Fats") Strachan killed Officer John Milledge. Witnesses saw some boys trying to sneak into Dorsey Park to watch a football game, saw Officer Milledge try to stop them, saw Strachan waving a rifle around, heard the shot, saw Milledge fall with a bullet in his throat. And when Leroy bolted, people in the Overtown ghetto knew where he went: to New York City, where his father lived, and where the Miami police might not bother to follow.

More than 40 years later, they followed. One day in February 1990, Strachan left the building where he worked as an elevator operator. He knew that the police would be waiting. His relatives in Miami had called to warn him that detectives had come around asking about his whereabouts, after they got a tip that Milledge's killer was alive and living in New York. "He was a perfect gentleman," recalls Detective George Cadavid, who helped make the arrest, "but that doesn't excuse him from the fact that he killed a policeman." Police took Strachan to the Manhattan jail that is known as the Tombs. The nickname is an understatement. If he survived the jail's daily brawls and stabbings, and was extradited to Florida on charges of first-degree murder, he could face the electric chair.

The news of his arrest shocked neighbors on 120th Street in Harlem. It surprised employees at 200 Varick Street, where Strachan had worked for 20 years. It stunned the choir at the Greater Refuge Temple, where he sang bass- baritone. "We said, 'That's not the Leroy Strachan we know -- he wouldn't hurt a fly,' " says elder Charles Wright. "He's not the sneaky, runaway kind of guy." Then there were Leroy's children, who had no idea that for 45 years, their father had lived with a secret that finally caught up with him. Perhaps it was poetic justice that one of his three sons works as a prison guard.

The irony is that in 1946, when the crime occurred, it was not investigated quite so vigorously. Miami was a different town back then. John Milledge was one of the first black officers on the police force, but he was only allowed to patrol in black areas, could only question and arrest black suspects. When he was shot, the rest of the police force searched the neighborhood, asked questions, but eventually the trail went cold. Some people say that for all these years, most folks over a certain age in Overtown knew where Strachan was. But the police never found out.

The silence was broken two years ago, when the police got a tip from a caller who had been watching the television show Crime Stoppers. She said that on the night of the shooting, she saw Leroy run by her house with a rifle. Her boyfriend, later to become her husband, was a friend of Leroy's and made her swear never to tell. After he died, she had a change of heart. Perhaps it was her guilty conscience at remaining silent for so long. Perhaps it was the $1,000 reward. In any event, her information thawed out the Milledge file, and in six months detectives from the cold-cases squad tracked Leroy down. He wasn't exactly hiding; he hadn't even changed his name.

Most people who followed the case were not eager to see a 63-year-old man, with a loving family and an aura of grace about him, spend his last days in jail. Though Strachan confessed to the shooting after his arrest, Florida prosecutors were willing to work out a deal that would have allowed him to go free. Even one of Milledge's surviving relatives, a great-great-grandniece, said he should not be imprisoned. "He lived a Christian, decent life," says Pauline Brown. "He sent money to his family. He made something out of himself. He didn't get into any trouble after all these years." All she wanted, she said, was "to shake his hand and hear him say he's sorry."

But this time, Miami police were not about to let the case go. In a city of devouring violence, where policing is so lethal a job, the idea that a cop killer should escape punishment angered the force. A new police chief, Calvin Ross, pressed for extradition, saying that to let Strachan go would "send the wrong message." It didn't matter that it might have been hard to prove manslaughter, much less murder, in a case that was nearly a half-century old.

The extradition negotiations dragged on for more than a year. During that time, Strachan was the oldest inmate in the Tombs. He used his $5 weekly earnings to buy Spanish newspapers for other inmates, who called him "Pops." Strachan's lawyers, William Kunstler and Ron Kuby, fought the case through the courts. "We took the position that in light of the fact that 45 years had gone by, during which Leroy lived openly and publicly, he wasn't a fugitive," says Kuby. Finally last week, Florida officials agreed to a deal: Strachan would plead down to manslaughter, in exchange for a one-year prison term and probation. The 19 months he spent in jail in New York mean that he has already served his time.

In the end, the courts realized that even if Leroy was once a killer, he had become what he pretended to be his whole adult life: a model citizen. He paid his debt to society without society ever even presenting the bill. And so, this week, he will walk out of jail for the first time in two years and be a free man for the first time since a November night 45 years ago.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Miami and Tom Curry/New York