3-time escapee deported by Canada

A killer and three-time escaped convict who was among the nation's most wanted criminals after more than a year on the lam has been deported to the United States from Canada.

Richard McNair, 48, was turned over to U.S. marshals at the border Thursday, said Jennifer Morrison, a spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency. She said she didn't know where he was taken.

Dave Carpenter, North Dakota's chief U.S. marshal, said McNair likely will be taken to Louisiana to face federal escape charges, but he could not release any timetable.

"More than likely what they did is meet him at the border somewhere by the East Coast, and then they brought him into our custody," Carpenter said.

McNair was among the nation's 15 most wanted fugitives when he was captured Oct. 25 in Campbellton, New Brunswick in Canada. McNair had smuggled himself out of federal prison in Louisiana in a pile of mailbags that were shrink-wrapped on a pallet April 5, 2006.

He was convicted of killing Jerome Theis of Circle Pines, Minn., in 1987 during a burglary at a Minot grain elevator. Richard Kitzman, an elevator employee, was shot three times but survived.

It was the third escape attempt for McNair, a former military police officer and police informant who was tackled and arrested by a rookie with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after an attempted traffic stop about 100 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border.

The Louisiana prison break was McNair's third.

McNair and two other prisoners escaped from a North Dakota prison in 1992 through a ventilation duct. He was caught about nine months later in Nebraska.

In February 1988, he used a tube of lip balm to grease up his hand and slip out of handcuffs at the Minot police station. He was captured after he jumped from the third floor of a building near a Minot hospital.

(This version CORRECTS overline to delete reference to N.D. border).)