Police: Missing bicycle reflector leads to break in nearly 30-year-old Wisconsin mystery
Police in West Des Moines, Iowa stopped a man on a bicycle earlier this summer for a safety violation for not having a reflector on it.
It turns out the man officers stopped, 71-year-old George Hartleroad, was wanted on a warrant out of Wisconsin from 1995, according to police.
“You’ve been on the run, for longer than two out of the three officers here on the street here have been alive,” said one of the arresting West Des Moines Officers.
Hartleroad was convicted of a violent attack on a Minnesota mother back in 1983 in Chippewa County, Wis.
Court records show Hartleroad served prison time but was out on parole.
Hartleroad never returned to his halfway house and had been on the run ever since, according to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
Officer body camera video released to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS captured the encounter where Hartleroad gave police a different name during the stop.
It took officers a long time to figure out the man’s true identity, according to the body camera video.
“Ok… brother it’s time to be honest with me… the info you gave me come back to a dead guy,” said one of the officers.
Finally, after a lengthy exchange, Hartleroad gave the officers his real name, which led them to find a warrant out of Western Wisconsin.
“First off, I’m surprised he was still alive,” said William Glass, retired Chippewa County Sheriff’s Department investigator who helped solve the case in 1983.
Glass said the victim had been found tied to a tree by two women who heard her cries for help.
“Our victim in this case, would have died of exposure,” said Glass. “I think God had been looking out for her that day.”
Glass told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that he reached out to the victim to let her know there had been an arrest decades later.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections confirms that Hartleroad was brought back to the state last month and remains in the Dane County Jail in Madison.
“He has been served with papers informing him that the Department of Corrections intends to revoke his community supervision,” wrote a DOC spokesperson.