Left: Steven Johnson escaped an Oregon prison facility in 1994 (Oregon Department of Corrections). Right: U.S. marshals arrested Johnson, who had assumed the name William Cox, in July 2024 in Macon, Georgia. (Bibb County Sheriff’s Office)
U.S. marshals arrested a convicted child sex abuser in Georgia after he had been on the run for 30 years since he walked away from an Oregon prison work detail, officials said.
Marshals took Steven Craig Johnson, 70, into custody in Macon on Tuesday, the Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force said in a press release. In November 1994, Johnson, then 40, fled while serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse and sodomy at Mill Creek Correctional Facility near Salem, Oregon, the Oregon Department of Corrections said. Mill Creek was an unfenced facility located on about 3,000 acres. It closed in 2021, but at the time housed nearly 300 inmates who were within four years of release.
Marshals say that following his escape, Johnson assumed the identity of a child named William Cox who died in January 1962 in Texas. Johnson was reportedly able to get ahold of the boy’s birth certificate and obtained a Social Security card in Texas in 1995 as Cox. He then allegedly received a Georgia driver’s license three years later. Johnson had been living in Macon since at least 2011, officials say.
The Oregon DOC put Johnson on its list of Most Wanted Fugitives.
“Based on his record, Fugitive Johnson is a pedophile and presents a high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys,” the DOC said in a wanted poster. “Fugitive Johnson should not be allowed contact with children.”
In 2015, the DOC requested the help of U.S. marshals in locating Johnson. This year, “new investigative technology employed by the Diplomatic Security Service” developed new information on the case, though it did not specify the technology. Eventually it led marshals to a Macon apartment complex in the 2000 block of Vineville Avenue where Johnson lived. Cops took Johnson to the Bibb County Jail where he is awaiting extradition back to Oregon.
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