Trouble in Paradise
U.S. fugitives may think they can hide in Belize, but here's the untold story of how some get caught
At first, nothing. Then, a toilet flushed--over and over. Grinage called for his officers to break open the main sewer pipe to catch anything being flushed down the toilet, but it took too long. After a few minutes, a woman came to the door. Inside the house, police stepped over piles of trash as they searched the steamy dwelling. Schuh, a large, longhaired man with a bushy beard tied at the end with a rubber band, was brought into the living room, along with his wife and brother. Osterhout and the police remember him as manically talkative. He offered the police a few beers, and when they turned up a substantial block of $100 bills still in the bank wrappers, he called it his retirement money. If he was surprised to see an American agent, Schuh didn't let on. "Hey, Mr. Policeman," he taunted Osterhout. "Aren't you far from home? Did you come to tell me I won the lottery?"
At the time, Grinage recalls, he was taken aback when Schuh and his wife started hugging and kissing on the couch; only later, during a subsequent search, did he learn what they were trying to hide: another wad of cash secreted in the furniture. Within a few weeks, U.S. marshals put the Schuh brothers on an airplane back to the United States. Today, they're awaiting trial in Wisconsin--and the recovered money, in accordance with the law here, has gone to the Belize government.
Chasing fugitives is only part of Osterhout's job as the U.S. Embassy's regional security officer. His primary responsibility is the physical security of the embassy and the U.S. diplomats and staff. The Diplomatic Security bureau is best known for protecting the secretary of state and high-profile foreign visitors. Osterhout, an eight-year DS veteran, guarded diplomatic VIPS including Yasser Arafat and the Dalai Lama during an earlier assignment to New York.
"Pit bull." For the onetime ski patroller from upstate New York drawn to law enforcement work, the fugitive hunting began in April 2002, two months into his Belize assignment, when the FBI called him about a wanted cop killer. Christopher Davis was convicted of the 1972 shooting of an off-duty police officer during a bar robbery in a St. Louis suburb. After being released, he skipped out on his parole, and the FBI picked up a tip that his girlfriend was traveling to Belize. With that, the manhunt was on. Osterhout sent Hamilton, his investigator, to follow the girlfriend when she landed at the airport. Hamilton, a quiet, dignified man with a shaved head and a bushy white beard, is Osterhout's secret weapon. A veteran of 14 years on the Belize police force, including six on a military tactical team, he moved to New York and became a U.S. citizen before returning here to work for the U.S. Embassy in 1999. "Keith is just like a pit bull," says Osterhout. "I give him cases, and he just doesn't let go until he gets these people."
Hamilton's surveillance of Davis's girlfriend initially led nowhere, and the investigator spent the next several months trying to hunt down Davis as he moved around the country just ahead of his pursuers. Hamilton tracked him to a Belize City mosque, for instance, but then he vanished before Osterhout could obtain a Belizean expulsion order. That happens, says Osterhout. "We can't surveil 24 hours a day."
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