TROUBLE IN PARADISE

U.S. Fugitives May Think They Can Hide In Belize, But Here's The Untold
Story Of How Some Get Caught

Belize City, Belize--It was 4 in the morning, and Thad Osterhout was trying
hard not to break out laughing.

The clean-cut U.S. agent leaned against a tropical-green wall in a dingy
police station, watching his latest catch: an American fugitive named
Arthur Schuh, wanted for skipping out on cocaine distribution charges in
Wisconsin. Every few minutes, a large rat scurried across the floor,
sending Schuh leaping to his feet and yelling, "Shoot it!" Schuh scrambled
to stomp on the rodent, drawing a droll rebuke from Belize Police Inspector
Alford Grinage: "Don't kill it. That's my pet."

For Osterhout, an agent with the State Department's Diplomatic Security
bureau, this was just another early morning on the job. Stationed at the
U.S. Embassy in Belize City, he is an unusual kind of diplomat--one
carrying a badge and a gun. And while other diplomats may favor the social
scene, Osterhout is on the streets hunting some of America's most wanted.
By his count, Schuh and his brother, picked up in the same Belize police
raid, are the 55th and 56th fugitives that he has helped capture and send
home in his 3 1/2 years here.

For decades, American fugitives have made their way to Central and South
America. Who hasn't heard of the legendary Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, the desperadoes who found sanctuary in South America in 1901 (but were
believed killed in an encounter with Bolivian soldiers in 1909 after
resuming their outlaw ways)? In more recent times, fugitives have often
headed south, correctly counting on looser law enforcement, rampant
corruption, and a paucity of extradition treaties to put them beyond the
reach of U.S. law. For some, that is still true. But other fugitives, like
the Schuh brothers, are finding that disappearing is getting harder to
do--and many are surprised by the readiness of authorities in places like
Belize to work hand in glove with U.S. authorities.

"Open The Door"

The U.S. Marshals Service is the government's lead agency for hunting
fugitives, but with only three foreign field offices, it must rely heavily
on its law enforcement counterparts in the State Department. Diplomatic
Security has agents in 159 countries, and last year alone they helped
return some 104 fugitives from 40 countries.

Traditionally press shy, the Diplomatic Security bureau granted U.S. News
rare access to its Belize operations.

Even though he has no official law enforcement authority in Belize,
Osterhout plays a surprisingly active role in finding and apprehending
fugitives from U.S. law. Take the case of the Schuhs. Their apprehension
began earlier that morning in May, after the Belize police confirmed a tip
about an American fitting Arthur Schuh's description. At 2:30 a.m., a group
of local cops met Osterhout and Keith Hamilton, a Belizean-American
investigator at the U.S. Embassy, outside a small yellow house on stilts,
which was secured with iron bars over the doors and windows.

Osterhout, clad in a "U.S. Police" T-shirt with a badge hanging around his
neck, watched from the street as Grinage climbed the stairs and rapped on
the door. "Police!" he bellowed. "Open the door."

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."

Working a network of sources from his police days, Hamilton eventually
picked up Davis's trail leading deeper into Belize's jungle, to a rural
500-acre plot of land owned by the mosque.

Late one night, clad in his old Army camouflage and armed with a Sig 9-mm
pistol, Hamilton trekked toward an isolated cabin on the property.

Davis, a former black militant, was considered dangerous, but Hamilton said
he was not intimidated either by Davis or by Belize's poisonous snakes.
"The stars were shining bright that night," he recalls.

Reaching the makeshift cabin, Hamilton saw that Davis had been there
recently, all right, but he was gone. In the end, the biggest threat that
night was the mosquitoes, swarming after days of heavy rains.

Finally, after five months of sleuthing, Hamilton received the decisive
tip, and the Belize police were able to nab Davis at a friend's house.

It was evident that Davis's experience in Belize didn't match up to a
vacation brochure. "Life on the run was not good," says Osterhout. "His
wanted poster said 170 pounds, but he was probably 130 pounds ... and he
was just covered in mosquito bites." Today, Davis is serving time in Missouri.

Why Belize?

This tiny nation of only 280,000 people does seem to draw a surprising
number of fugitives.

They come here "for the same reasons as the tourists," says Gerald Westby,
Belize's police commissioner. "It's English-speaking and close to Mexico."
Some try to blend in with vacationers on sun-drenched coastal islands like
Ambergris Cay, and others, like Davis, try to find sanctuary in the jungle.

They also appear to find comfort in the poverty (hence, their money goes
further) and lawlessness (figuring they won't be a priority for local
cops). Belize City is a violent place, currently suffering from a rash of
"pedal by" shootings--executions by gunmen on bicycles.

Amid this backdrop, perhaps it is not surprising that Belize--with a
national police force of just over 1,000 officers--has granted Osterhout
unusual leeway, including permission to carry a concealed weapon.
Sometimes, he calls in local police only for the actual arrest.

Belize signed an extradition treaty with the United States in 2000, but
officials are often quite willing to expedite a deportation instead of the
lengthy extradition process.

The police also assigned a sergeant, David Chi, as a full-time liaison to
the embassy. "Belize is very close to being one of the most cooperative
Central American nations," says James Schield, chief of international
investigations for the U.S. Marshals Service. One key secret to Osterhout's
success is the generous amount of equipment and training that he has helped
obtain for the poorly equipped Belize police.

Money, though, is still short.

Asked to arrange a ride-along for a U.S. News photographer, Grinage looks
embarrassed. "We're out of vehicles," he says. "There's no money to repair
them, man."

Belize also has its own self-interest. "We are only too happy to get rid of
these criminals when they come to Belize," says Westby, the police
commissioner. This was especially true in the case of one of Belize's most
notorious fugitives: Reinaldo Silvestre, a charismatic Cuban with a host of
gruesome nicknames.

He called himself "Dr. Ray," but the Belize press labeled him a "modern-day
Frankenstein," and he was best known in the United States as the "Butcher
of South Beach" after being featured on the television show America's Most
Wanted. By whatever name, Silvestre allegedly spent more than a year posing
as a plastic surgeon in Miami. Preying on the vain and the frugal (in part
by advertising cut-rate breast enhancements), Silvestre left in his wake
botched surgeries and scarred women, according to Miami police.

In one particularly grisly operation, he reportedly gave a set of women's
breast implants to a Mexican bodybuilder looking for enhanced pecs. (What's
more, the bodybuilder woke up during the operation because of too little
anesthesia.) And then one day in May 1999, Silvestre vanished.

Four years later, after Silvestre was featured on a rerun of the America's
Most Wanted episode, Osterhout got a call. Miami Beach detectives had
learned that Silvestre might be practicing medicine in Belize. Hamilton
then found Silvestre at a local medical college, where he was, ironically,
teaching students how to pass the U.S. medical boards--a feat Silvestre
himself never managed.

But there was a twist: As a Cuban citizen, Silvestre could not simply be
deported to the United States, so Osterhout had to arrange a formal
extradition--which took U.S. authorities more than a year. Says Osterhout,
"We located this guy quickly, but it took forever to get the paperwork."

"Con Artist"

The delay was troubling.

There were concerns about whether Silvestre was practicing medicine but no
evidence for authorities to act on. Finally, the extradition papers came
through.

Early on Oct. 7, 2004, as Silvestre was standing in his white medical coat
waiting for his ride to work, the Belize police arrested him. Afterward,
they found he had been operating a medical clinic in his basement. "In an
hour of talking, you could almost understand how he was able to con all
these people," says Osterhout. "Like any good con artist, he was persuasive
and charming."

At first, Silvestre vowed to fight extradition. That was before Hattieville
prison, Belize's squalid main lockup.

After only a few weeks there, Silvestre waived his appeal rights and was
sent to Florida. No surprise. "They go to Hattieville, and they decide it's
not for them," says Chi. "That's how we get rid of a lot of them."
Silvestre is scheduled to go on trial August 24, having pleaded not guilty.

If some, like Silvestre, are smooth talkers, other fugitives should have
known to keep their mouths shut. Take Charles Mendenhall, who was wanted
for attempted murder in Florida. The Belize police noticed him after he got
into a dispute over a bar bill in San Pedro on the resort island of
Ambergris Cay. Another fugitive was captured after he boasted to tourists
on the island of Cay Caulker that he was running from the law. And there
are the what-were-they-thinking cases.

Victor Bradley, who fled charges in Oklahoma City of raping a mentally
disabled woman, was nabbed after he went to the U.S. Embassy for a new
passport.

His brother, Crel, wanted for violating parole on a child-molestation
conviction, was picked up, too.

Some cases stand out. For Osterhout, a father of two, those involving
pedophiles are perhaps the most rewarding.

In one, Osterhout learned about an American named Frederick Schaefer, a
convicted sex offender from California. He was arrested in Belize, accused
of faking an application for a Belizean passport, but he was released after
a local group paid his bail. Months later, Osterhout learned that Schaefer
had come to the attention of the Belize police because of allegations that
young kids were often spending time with him and even staying overnight.

Even more worrisome, Schaefer was trying to open a day-care business.

Concerned that he might be a repeat offender, Osterhout had a colleague in
Washington pester California authorities to pursue a warrant on Schaefer
for parole violations. They eventually agreed, and Schaefer was expelled.

Suspicious Tourists

With such a small population, inhabiting an area not quite the size of
Massachusetts, Belize has a bit of a small-town feel. Osterhout once
located a fugitive less than 90 minutes after getting her description. The
country never felt smaller to Osterhout than when he was trying to track
down David Clenney, a Houston man wanted for kidnapping his 4-year-old son
during a messy 2003 divorce.

For Osterhout, the case began implausibly enough when a tourist vacationing
in San Pedro on Ambergris Cay became curious about a father and son who
were hanging out in a bar on Super Bowl Sunday last year. Suspicious about
the father's story, she had her fiance stage a photo of her with the other
man in the background. After returning home, she scoured the
missing-children websites and then called police after identifying Clenney.

Clenney, as it turned out, wasn't hard to find. Since Osterhout doesn't
have a budget for investigations, he boarded the 15-minute flight to San
Pedro for a short vacation.

While his family enjoyed the water, he took a few hours to canvass some
local contacts.

Looking for information, Osterhout stopped at a hotel bar for a beer. Just
15 minutes later, Clenney's son walked in. "The kid plops down next to me
at the bar," he recalls. "So I start talking to him." Osterhout quickly
learned that Clenney was working and living at the hotel; he even saw
Clenney later that evening at the bar. It took several weeks to arrange the
paperwork to deport the father and return the child to his mother.

Osterhout still has a photo of the boy playing with his badge at the San
Pedro airstrip.

Of course, not everybody gets caught.

Belize's most infamous fugitive is probably Joseph Ross, who once ran an
aviation firm in Oklahoma. Ross was indicted for tax fraud in 1986 and
eventually settled in Belize (having taken Belizean citizenship in 1988).
He now runs a luxury jungle resort. But Osterhout recalls the words of one
fugitive caught after a two-year chase: "You guys have no idea how many
other fugitives are here."

Actually, they have at least some idea. As Osterhout wraps up his tour of
duty in Belize, he will be leaving behind more than a dozen open
cases--among them fugitives charged with murder, drug dealing, child
pornography, and running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

Enough to keep his successor busy and to fill an episode of America's Most
Wanted--Belize Edition.