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| Longtime Fugitive Caught in Ohio Gets Prison Time |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 07/28/2003 |
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A convicted rapist who walked away from a Pennsylvania prison in 1976 and started a new life in Ohio was sentenced to a three- to 12-month jail term and one year of probation. 'I acknowledge all things I did. I accept responsibility for them. I have tried very hard to amend my behavior. I continue to make a difference even today,' David Alden Fontaine told Montgomery County Judge William R. Carpenter on Friday. 'I've made a lot of mistakes, but I'm not the person I was (in 1976).' A dozen people from Cincinnati who knew Fontaine by his alias, Alden Irish, traveled to Pennsylvania to ask the judge for leniency. They described Fontaine as a loving father and husband who turned his interest in the heating and air conditioning trades into a family business that grosses more than $1 million a year. Fontaine pleaded guilty to the Aug. 16, 1974, rape of a 27-year-old Norristown State Hospital patient and was sentenced to four years in prison. On Oct. 15, 1976, six months into his sentence, Fontaine failed to return after a weekend furlough from Graterford state prison. Acting on a tip, a Pennsylvania State Police trooper ran the name Alden Irish through a national computer database, which led him to Fontaine, who was arrested Nov. 18. Fontaine volunteers with community agencies that help recovering addicts, has set up community softball leagues and fund raisers, and donates time and money to groups such as Habitat for Humanity, according to friends who testified as character witnesses on Friday. When confronted with facts about Fontaine's past by Assistant District Attorney Christopher Mullaney, friend Joanne Spencer testified, 'That's not the Alden I know. The Alden I know is not the Alden you are trying to bring up.' Defense lawyer Thomas C. Egan III, who sought a probationary sentence, argued Fontaine changed his life and was unlikely to commit another felony. Carpenter credited Fontaine for turning his life around but added that 'an escape from prison merits a prison sentence.' After his first wife died, Fontaine raised his son alone until he remarried in 1999, according to testimony. His wife Linda Irish has been running the family business since Fontaine's capture. |
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