Fear and lying low in Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- This is not something you will find in the tourism brochures, but Las Vegas has long been a popular destination for dead-end criminals running from the law.

They swarm to Sin City's end-of-the-line motels and neon-lit casinos, betting they can beat the odds and get lost in the crowd, only to learn that this city of security guards and surveillance cameras is actually one of the worst places to go underground.

"If you think you can hide in Las Vegas, don't come," Henderson police chief Mike Mayberry said Wednesday in announcing the capture of Ohio highway sniper suspect Charles A. McCoy Jr., who was recognized at the Stardust hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Police say some fugitives use Las Vegas as a way station, a place where they can figure out their next move. Others take permanent refuge here, using fake names to start a new life.

Buford Furrow turned himself in to the FBI here after killing a postal worker and wounding five people in a 1999 shooting at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles. He took a taxi to Las Vegas. Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst hid out in Las Vegas for several days after robbing a San Francisco bank in 1974. So did Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, who thought Las Vegas would be an easy place to cash bad checks after butchering a Kansas family in 1959 in a spree that inspired the book "In Cold Blood." Even five of the Sept. 11 hijackers spent time here in summer 2001.

Las Vegas has a virtually unseen force of 9,000 private security guards patrolling hotel-casinos and bolstering the 2,000 or so sworn members of the police department. Add in a battery of surveillance cameras at hotel entrances, casino floors, elevators and hallways, and it is hard to stay hidden.

"People really can't hide too much because they have to live," Lee said. "They have to show their faces."

In most cases, Lee said, fugitives are simply trying to put distance between themselves and where they are wanted. In McCoy's case, he drove about 2,000 miles from Columbus, Ohio.

"They come here and have one last hurrah before they get arrested," Lee said.