By Mike Ellis
Anderson Independent Mail
ANDERSON, S.C. — A man who escaped from a South Carolina jail nearly 40 years ago has been captured in western Michigan.
Federal marshals said 58-year-old Dallas Smallwood was arrested Monday in Zeeland, 25 miles southwest of Grand Rapids. He escaped from the Anderson County jail in 1977 while serving a five-year sentence for grand larceny and receiving stolen goods.
The U.S. Marshals Service says Smallwood, a trucker, was using the name Waylon Wilson.
The Marshals Service has a Fugitive Task Force that works with state and local agencies to make arrests.
Smallwood is in custody at the Ottawa County jail in Michigan awaiting extradition to South Carolina. It’s not known if he has a lawyer yet.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Steve Hetherington says Smallwood may have been in western Michigan for 10 years.
Sgt. Brent Bannister of the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office remembers the warrant for Smallwood’s arrest, and said Smallwood was serving time at the county’s jail but was a state Department of Corrections inmate whose offenses likely happened outside Anderson County.
“Thanks to the cooperation, hard work and diligence of the U.S. Marshals Service and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, we were able to apprehend the offender,” said South Carolina Department of Corrections director Bryan Stirling.
Stirling’s department has removed Smallwood from a list of fugitives who have escaped, leaving 10 who are wanted for escapes from 1950 to 1992.