BOISE (AP) — It is an Idaho legend: Infamous outlaw Claude Dallas escaped from prison on Easter Sunday 1986, cutting two fences and vanishing into the desert.
Dallas fled into the same sagebrush landscape where he disappeared in 1981 after killing two Idaho Fish & Game officers. Fifteen months passed before the FBI captured Dallas the first time.
After his prison break, Dallas gave authorities the slip for almost a year, fanning his reputation as a canny Old West folk hero. His crimes and elusiveness spawned two books, a TV movie and courthouse groupies who called themselves the Dallas Cheerleaders.
But the legend of his escape — three years into a 22-year prison stay — may be a myth.
Law enforcement investigators now say the official account is probably false. Their skepticism is rooted in contradictory physical evidence, conflicting official accounts of what happened that Easter night and the disappearance of an independent review of the escape.
Rumors challenging the official account were widespread in law enforcement circles. The doubts were so serious that in 2001 the Idaho attorney general, Ada County sheriff and Idaho Department of Correction began an 18-month investigation.
Their theory: Prison officials faked the fence-cutting to cover up the fact Dallas outsmarted his keepers and simply walked out the front door with a group of visitors shortly before 8 p.m. on March 30, 1986.
The morning after, prison warden Arvon "A.J." Arave showed off precisely cut triangles in two chain-link fences to reporters and photographers.
"Everybody said they knew he was going to escape," Arave told the Los Angeles Times.
Correction Director Al Murphy also fed the mystique, saying: "You give Claude Dallas six miles and you might as well give him the country. Oh, well, we'll find him. It might take a century, but we'll find him."
The reinvestigation of who really snipped the 27-inch- and 31-inch-wide holes ended inconclusively. The case was dropped in 2003. This story is the first public disclosure of that inquiry.
Investigators couldn't prove that Dallas walked out of the Idaho State Correctional Institution, but they told the Idaho Statesman that the facts don't support the official account.
"My take is they screwed up and he was able to walk out the front door," said Ada County Detective Sgt. Pat Schneider, who worked on the case after then-Ada County Sheriff Vaughn Killeen ordered the 2001 inquiry.
"And somebody said, 'Well, I better cover my butt and do something to make it look like he escaped the other way.' I've never been able to prove it, but that's my gut instinct," he said.
The supervisor of the reinvestigation was Mike Dillon of the Idaho Attorney General's Office. A former FBI agent, Dillon has been a cop for 40 years.
He holds back from saying he believes a cover-up occurred. But Dillon doubts the official account.
"I am not at all satisfied that we've got the whole story ... but at the same time we couldn't come up with anything other than a lot of smoke. I remain skeptical," Dillon said.
Dallas, now 58, could end the speculation. But he has never granted an interview and did not respond to requests from the Idaho Statesman to break his silence.
"He isn't going to talk to you," said Bill Mauk, the lawyer who defended Dallas on the murder charges.
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A month after the escape, Murphy asked former San Quentin warden George Sumner to investigate. But Sumner's findings were missing for years. The report finally surfaced this month when the Statesman obtained it from another source. Sumner's report supports the theory that Dallas walked out with departing visitors.
Arave, who retired in 1996, told the Statesman he still believes Dallas cut his way out. But he doesn't rule out other theories.
"It's kind of like the Kennedy assassination, you know?" he said. "Who did it?"
The Statesman filed public records requests with the attorney general, sheriff and Corrections Department, and obtained about 1,000 pages of documents that provide the foundation for this story.
The investigation reached its climax in March 2003, when two key prison officers took lie-detector tests. Lt. Wayne Nimmo said he was present when the cut fences were discovered more than three hours after Dallas left. Sgt. George Baird was seen carrying bolt-cutters that night.
Both denied involvement in a cover-up. A polygraph examiner found their answers "indicative of the truth."
After 18 months, investigators couldn't prove their case.
"We couldn't go any further," said Dillon.
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Recaptured after 11 months, Dallas beat the escape rap in 1987 by convincing a jury he had to flee because his life was endangered by guards looking to kill him.
After that, he served the rest of his sentence for killing Fish and Game officers Bill Pogue and Conley Elms and was released Feb. 6, 2005. He'd served 22 years. He now has a Washington driver's license (the law prohibits disclosing his address).
Now, we learn his escape is an unsolved mystery. Dallas may prefer it that way.
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Along with Dillon, two other investigators did the bulk of the work on the 2001-03 inquiry. Gary Deulen was the attorney general's investigator who spent the most time on the case. He now is chief deputy sheriff in Canyon County.
"We're asked to believe," Deulen said, "that instead of a slit, (Dallas) cuts two perfect triangles; then after he's free he runs across a fresh dirt field after a rainstorm leaving no tracks; he keeps the bolt-cutters or the wire-snips but loses his hat, and his glasses fall off of his face and into a glasses case in the parking lot (350 feet away)? It's bizarre."
In 2001, Randy Blades was assigned to represent the Department of Correction in the reinvestigation.
"The least logical way that this thing could have happened has been bought hook, line and sinker," Blades said during one of the inquiry's interviews in 2002.
Today, Blades said: "I stand by that quote."
On the night of the escape, George Baird was in charge of tools and weapons. He said he retrieved a pair of bolt cutters for another officer to cut a padlock on Dallas' workshop locker. Baird said he can't remember whom he gave the cutters to, but suspects they may have been used to slice the fence.
"I've believed for 20 years Claude Dallas walked out our front door," Baird told the Statesman. "Somebody didn't want embarrassment. Claude Dallas was a high-profile offender. Claude Dallas committed a hideous crime against people in law enforcement and angered a great big community."
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Former Lt. Nimmo worked for corrections for 25 years and retired two months after his 2003 polygraph test. In a phone interview, he said: "I'd just as soon let it lie. One big reason I retired was because it was a big (screw) job to begin with, and people want to keep blowing (Dallas) into a hero, and he's just nothing but a murderer."
Asked if he knew anything about officers cutting fences, Nimmo said: "I don't want to talk to you about it" before hanging up.
Former Correction Director Murphy laughed off talk of a conspiracy.
"Listen to me," he said from his office in Salt Lake City, where he is a consultant. "That is asinine. That is just ridiculous. It didn't happen that way. It just didn't."
Added Murphy: "He went through the fence. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind. It's unquestionable."
Dallas, of course, remains the missing puzzle piece.
Geneva Holman, Dallas' visitor on the night of the escape, said Dallas has no interest in unraveling the mystery. "He's put that behind him. I don't think he wants a bunch more baloney in the newspaper."
Still, investigators have hope he will one day come forward.
"My No. 1 motive was to find out what the truth was," Blades told the Statesman. "We've got to find out what happened. It's one of the great unsolved mysteries."