CRESTED BUTTE: JAILING FUGITIVE WOULD BE CRIME

CRESTED BUTTE - Bummer. That sentiment echoed from Elk Avenue to Gothic
Road this weekend as residents of this live-and let-live town reacted to
news that one of their most infamous residents was finally captured after
27 years on the lam.

The arrest in New Mexico on Thursday of Richard Gordon Bannister, aka Neal
Murdoch, aka Grafton Mahler, on a drug smuggling charge from 1973 was a
real downer far many in Crested Butte - even to those who had never met the
high-profile community member who called himself Murdoch and kept his past
well-hidden for the nearly 25 years he lived here.

Murdoch, as they continue to call him around here, became the stuff of
legend three years ago when he disappeared into the night after federal
marshals questioned him in Crested Butte.

Many residents who were shocked back then to learn he had been a fugitive
all his years here were doubly shocked about his arrest last week for bail
jumping and on the old drug charges: They had hoped Murdoch, now 60, had
found another place where he could hide for another 25 years.

"Bummer," said Bert Phillips when he heard the news as he worked outside
the Crested Butte Center for the Arts on Saturday, readying gizmos for a
town brewfest today.

"He was one of the great mythic characters of the New West."

"Bummer," said Justin Theemling, 23, as he read a notice of Murdoch's
arrest pinned to the door of the Crested Butte Mountain Theater, where
Murdoch was so active for years as an actor and prop maker that the
theater's small bar is now named for him.

Theemling moved to Crested Butte in January and had never met Murdoch. But
he would have liked to -"like totally."

"Bummer," said Angie Hornbrook as she sipped a drink in Kochevar's - the
site of fundraisers for Murdoch after his disappearance three years ago. "I
hope they go easy on him. The guy was like the most benign guy on the planet."

That was the Murdoch known by Crested Butte.

The Bannister the U.S. Marshal's Office has been chasing for a quarter
century was a felon who had served time in Pennsylvania in the 1960s for a
drug conviction.

In 1973, he was indicted after a shipment of 22 pounds of cocaine hidden
inside wooden statues was intercepted when it allegedly was sent from
Bolivia to his home in San Cristobal, north of Taos. He jumped bail in 1974
before trial.

That same year, a stranger named Murdoch began working at a lapis mine near
Crested Butte. He lived in the mountains like a virtual hermit for a summer.

But soon Murdoch was hiding in plain sight.

He opened a bike shop and organized some of the first mountain bike events
in Crested Butte. He worked at a day-care center, a printing shop, a health
food store and as a waiter and a hotel concierge. He started a restaurant
and a theatrical props store. He became involved in community theater and
was an outspoken political activist.

When he left Crested Butte three years ago, he ran back to the scene of his
original alleged crime and lived a relatively low-key life in Taos under
the name Grafton Mahler for the past three years. He worked at an antiques
store and several thrift stores and lived for a time in a tent in the
mountains.

He was arrested after he purchased property using his real Social Security
number.

That has folks in Crested Butte scratching their heads. But Rick Ploff with
the U.S. Marshal's Office said it's not unusual that Bannister was found in
Taos.

"People on the run a lot of time go back to where they started out," Ploff
said.

Many in Crested Butte say they aren't dismayed about Murdoch's arrest
because he wasn't a saint. He could be prickly and aggressive and odd - "a
weird duck," as Crested Butte resident Rob Quint puts it.

But they feel he paid his debt to society with the thousands of hours he
volunteered to everything from day-care centers to theater productions in
Crested Butte.

They like to point out his alleged 1973 crime was so old it was typewritten
on onion-skin paper at a time when the Drug Enforcement Administration was
still called the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. His
court-appointed attorney was a junior in high school then.

There is talk in Crested Butte of doing a fundraiser - maybe selling "free
Murdoch" bumper stickers again. There are also plans underway for a busload
of townspeople to go to Albuquerque to show support when Murdoch goes to trial.

"Doesn't the federal government have anything better to do than run around
looking for someone who had a drug charge 25 years ago?" asked Crested
Butte Mayor Linda Powers. "It's ludicrous. He's not a threat to society."