Convicted murderer on FBI Most Wanted List arrested in Grand Blanc, Mich.
Leonard Moses had been on the run since 1971 after escaping from his grandmother’s funeral
FLINT, Mich. (WJRT) - A convicted murderer on the run for four decades was arrested in Grand Blanc on Thursday.
Leonard Rayne Moses escaped from custody in 1971 while attending his grandmother’s funeral in the Homewood area of Pittsburgh, Penn. He had been living in the Grand Blanc area and working as a traveling pharmacist under the name of Paul Dickson.
The FBI is not sure when Moses first came to Grand Blanc or how long he lived there.
Moses was convicted of first-degree murder for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a home in Pittsburgh during riots after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. The resulting fire caused burns to Mary Ampolo, who later died of pneumonia and other complications.
He was 17 when a Pennsylvania jury convicted him of the murder.
Moses was 18 when he escaped and a federal arrest warrant for his arrest was signed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The FBI listed Moses on the Most Wanted List and was offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
To mark the 45th anniversary of the escape in 2016, the FBI posted Moses' fugitive case on electronic billboards in Michigan and five other states.
Moses eventually was arrested on unrelated charges in St. Clair Shores earlier this year and his fingerprints were entered into a national database in October, which connected him to his fingerprints taken after the murder in 1968.
Moses, who is 68 now, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder in 1971. However, that sentence could be modified after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that sending youth to prison for life with no chance of parole amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
The FBI’s Detroit Fugitive Task Force arrested Moses without incident on Thursday. He remains in custody at the Genesee County Jail while awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania.
A press conference was planned in Pittsburgh on Friday to discuss the arrest. ABC12 News will have more on this story at 6 p.m.
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