Claude Dallas

Real Name: Claude Lafayette Dallas, Jr.
Aliases: None known
Wanted For: Murder, Escape
Missing Since: March 1986

Case

Details: Thirty-six-year-old Claude Dallas is a trapper, survivalist, and "mountain man". On January 5, 1981, two state Fish and Game wardens, fifty-year-old Bill Pogue and thirty-four-year-old Conley Elms, came to his Idaho camp to arrest him for poaching deer. He shot and killed them both. According to Dallas's friend who witnessed the shootings, Dallas dumped Conley's body in a nearby river and then drove off with Bill's body in the back of his truck. After dumping Bill's body, he fled into the northern Nevada desert. He eluded authorities for sixteen months before being arrested in April 1982 in Paradise Valley, Nevada, not far from the murder scene.
At Dallas's trial, he argued that he fired in self-defense after he saw Bill go for his gun. Prosecutors, however, noted that after the men were wounded, Dallas shot them both in the head with a second weapon to kill them. The jury convicted him of manslaughter; they felt that he was legitimately in fear for his life when he shot them, but lost his claim for self-defense when he shot them more than once. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison. On March 30, 1986, he escaped from the Idaho State Penitentiary by cutting through two fences. He has not been seen since.
Extra Notes: This case first aired on Special #1 on January 20, 1987 in a FBI fugitive roll call. Dallas' flight from justice was also documented on The FBI Files and City Confidential.
Results: Captured. On March 8, 1987, Dallas was arrested outside a 7-11 convenience store in Riverside, California. He had been living under the alias "Al Schrenk". He was returned to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence. He was also charged with escape; however, in September 1987, he was acquitted after he claimed that prison guards had threatened his life. In February 2005, he was released from prison after serving twenty-two years; eight years of his sentence were removed for good behavior.
Links:

• Claude Dallas on Wikipedia
• Claude Dallas on Murderpedia
• Two wildlife officers gunned down in Idaho - January 8, 1981
• FBI, deputies grab suspect in game wardens' slayings - April 19, 1982
• Dallas convicted of manslaughter - October 21, 1982
• Dallas escapes; woman denies assisting him - April 1, 1986
• Raid on house fails to turn up escaped killer - July 9, 1986
• Sympathy for a killer: TV movie takes a side - October 28, 1986
• Claude Dallas sought in Bitterroot Valley - November 9, 1986
• Fugitive Claude Dallas arrested - March 9, 1987
• Mountain man convicted of killing game wardens captured - March 9, 1987
• Jury Acquits Game Warden Killer of Escape - September 5, 1987
• Jury: Dallas was forced to escape - September 6, 1987
• Idaho outlaw Claude Dallas to be released - February 6, 2005
• Killer of 2 officers in Idaho freed after 22 years in prison - February 7, 2005
• Convicted killer Claude Dallas released from prison - February 7, 2005
• Convicted Killer Claude Dallas Goes Free - 2005
• Conley Elms and William Pogue at Find a Grave
• Conley Elms and Bill Pogue at Officer Down Memorial Page

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