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A grave marker at Tamborine Mountain Cemetery in Queensland, Australia, bears the name John Vincent Damon.
For many years, until his death on August 6, 2010, at the age of 69, that was how he was known to others, including his family.
But his real name is William Leslie Arnold, and he has a secret, dark past unknown to his wife and two adult children in Australia and three surviving stepdaughters from a previous marriage in the United States.
When he was 16 and living in Nebraska in the 1950s, he fatally shot his parents during what he described as a fight over the use of the family car and then buried them in their backyard. It took about two weeks before the crime was discovered, authorities said.
Mr. Arnold pleaded guilty in 1959 to murdering his parents, and was sentenced to life in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. During his time there, Mr. Arnold was described by the authorities as a “model prisoner”, but on July 14, 1967, he and other prisoners escaped.
The other prisoners were soon recaptured. But authorities couldn’t find Mr. Arnold for years, and the case went cold. However, over the past few years, investigators with the United States Marshals Service were able to gather evidence that ultimately led to the case through DNA testing.
The discovery came as a shock to his surviving family, who authorities said were unaware of Mr. Arnold’s past. To her, he was John Damon, her father and her husband. For the American authorities, he was a convicted murderer and escaped from custody.
Surviving family members in Australia and Mr Arnold’s stepson in the United States declined to comment.
Matt Westover, the deputy US Marshal who solved the case, said in an interview that connecting Mr. Arnold with John Damon was a process that took years and involved sifting through thousands of pages of documents and investigating several leads in the United States as well. as in Brazil and Canada.
Several law enforcement agencies over the years have tried to piece together what happened to Mr. Arnold after he escaped. The FBI investigated the case in the 1990s. He was later turned over to the Nebraska Department of Corrections. Ultimately, it was forwarded to the US Marshal and assigned to Mr. Westover in August 2020.
“I was very interested in the case,” Mr. Westover said.
Shortly after being assigned to the case, Mr. Westover approached Geoff Britton, who had worked on the case from 2004 to 2013 when he was with the Nebraska Department of Corrections.
Mr. Britton, who now heads the Office of Law Enforcement Support in California, said that after he left Nebraska, he continued to investigate the case “as a hobby.” Chief Britton said he and Mr. Westover had talked about it often over the past few years.
“I spent a lot of nights just reading because I was just surprised at all the different information and just trying to find something, some kind of lead,” Mr. Westover said.
There are many false leads.
One theory about Mr. Arnold’s whereabouts is that he has fled to Brazil. It was based on immigration documents in Mr. Arnold’s name that were issued to people in Brazil less than two years after he escaped from prison. But Mr Westover said Brazilian officials had no record of Mr Arnold, and it was unclear why his name was on the document.
Mr. Westover tracked down Mr. Arnold’s ex-girlfriend, which led to several letters written to him and his family from prison. But none of the correspondence after his escape gives any clue as to where he ended up.
Mr. Westover also found a postcard from Canada and one from California with Mr. Arnold’s name on it. That leads to no results either.
In a wanted poster for Mr. Arnold, the U.S. Marshals Service said he was “very talented in music and generally used those skills to survive financially.” The details of his life also yielded nothing.
“It just seemed like everything was working against us,” Mr. Westover said.
Over time, various things led the investigators to determine that after Mr. Arnold escaped from prison, he had fled to Chicago, where he started using a new name, John Damon, and quickly met and married a woman with a child. He then began moving around, living in Cincinnati and Miami, according to The Omaha World-Herald, which chronicled Mr. Arnold’s life through a series of articles and a podcast. Later, she divorced her husband and moved to California, where she remarried and had children, and eventually settled in Australia.
Finally, in November 2020, Mr. Westover tracked down Mr. Arnold’s cousin in Missouri, who agreed to provide a DNA sample. Then, in August 2022, Mr. Westover connected with a man from Australia who was trying to learn about his late father, John Damon, who told him that he was an orphan from Chicago.
DNA samples from Mr. Arnold’s sister and Mr. Damon’s son showed a match, and proved that Mr. Damon was indeed Mr. Arnold.
“It’s exciting,” Mr. Westover said. “I’m not going to say I beat the lottery because I’ve never been in the lottery – I’m sure it’s a very good thing – but I’m very happy.”
Then comes the hard part: Mr. Westover has to break the news to a man from Australia whose father known as John Damon is actually an escaped convict who has killed his parents. Mr. Westover said he had told him over a video call.
“It was a very difficult conversation,” Mr. Westover said. “His family doesn’t know anything about it, so it’s hard not to feel bad.”
Chief Britton said he had spoken to Mr Arnold’s family in Australia, trying to answer questions about his unknown history.
“They get a new perspective on people who have different views,” Chief Britton said. “That must be hard to process.”
After getting to know the Damon family, Mr. Westover said that he learned that Mr. Arnold had become a businessman in Australia, and that he had “lived a good life and seemed to have changed his ways”.
“He was a good father to her,” Mr Westover said.
In March, Mr. Westover and other investigators traveled to Australia to work on the case. While there, they visited the grave of John Vincent Damon.
“I’m glad he’s dead,” Mr. Westover said, explaining that if Mr. Arnold had lived, he would have been detained in his 80s.
“Good as it sounds, I’m glad because I really don’t want to put my family through that,” Mr. Westover said. “I think that’s enough, what if I take his father away from him.”
Kirsten Noyes contribute to research.
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