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| Fugitive for 22 years surrenders to Md. Police |
| By Baltimore Sun |
| Published: 10/08/2001 |
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After 22 years as a fugitive from Maryland justice, the man his Arizona neighbors knew as Paul Robinson, surrendered recently and reluctantly resumed his identity as convicted burglar James A. Zajonc. Driven from Baltimore by a childhood friend, Zajonc, a tall, lean man with a bushy mustache, arrived at the parking lot of the Maryland State Police barracks in Glen Burnie shortly after noon. Then he walked in and introduced himself to Sgt. Philip Nolan, who was expecting him. Ten minutes later, Zajonc was put in a police car and taken to the House of Correction at Jessup, where he had walked away from a work detail in 1979. From there, he was to be taken to the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center in Baltimore, where authorities will decide where to send him to resume the nine-year sentence he fled after 4 1/2 years. He also faces escape charges. Zajonc's surrender occurred after a cross-country auto journey from Arizona, where a judge declined to extradite him Sept. 18 but ordered him to return to Maryland and deal with his legal problems here. During the 22 years he was a fugitive, Zajonc married, had a son and worked as a rock driller in the oil fields of the Southwest. Maryland had the opportunity to extradite Zajonc from Arizona in 1994, when he faced charges after a traffic accident, but Gov. William Donald Schaefer declined to do so -- apparently for budgetary reasons. Zajonc said he thought his problems with Maryland were over until a traffic stop this May, when an outstanding Maryland warrant -- renewed in 1998 -- came up on the patrolman's computer. But Maryland now has a governor, Parris N. Glendening, with a policy of cutting no breaks for prison escapers. |
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