A man accused of killing a 3-year-old boy in Utah in December 1986 was to be arraigned here Monday on a fugitive warrant.
Steven Ray Allen, 42, had eluded law officers for months in the rugged mountains of southwestern Montana and eastern Idaho before he was captured on Saturday by Ravalli County authorities.Sheriff Jay Printz said three deputies sneaked into Allen's camp on the Idaho side of the Continental Divide and arrested him about 16 miles southwest of Lost Trail Pass.
Allen is wanted by authorities in connection with the strangulation of his girlfriend's son, Michael Barrie, while he and the boy waited for the youth's mother outside a store in Moab, Utah.
Although Allen was seen crawling when the deputies entered his camp, Printz said he doubted that Allen knew officers were there until just before his capture.
"I think he had no inkling," Printz said. "He even made a comment he had no idea he was being looked for that heavily."
Allen reportedly fled from Idaho Falls, Idaho, in April 1987 with several weapons and backpacking gear.
He had been the object of an FBI manhunt since January, when he was the subject of a segment on the television show "America's Most Wanted."
That show prompted several reports that he had been seen in the Bitterroot and Sapphire mountains of Montana and Idaho.
Two weeks ago, the FBI made public confirmed sightings of Allen last September west of Darby and said he apparently had traveled from Philipsburg to Gibbonsville, Idaho, and back to near Philipsburg.
Last Wednesday, two Forest Service employees said they talked with a man on the Thunder Mountain Road south of Painted Rocks Lake along the West Fork of the Bitterroot River, and they later identified him as Allen from FBI photographs.
Printz said that Allen offered no resistance when deputies entered his camp, that both Allen and his horse were very malnourished, and the horse appeared to have a lame right leg.
Allen carried only a .357-caliber Magnum pistol when he was captured, Printz said.