Border Agents Nab an FBI Top 10 Fugitive Wanted For 1983 Murder

Brittany M. Hughes | January 31, 2017
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In a win for American safety, U.S. border agents nabbed a Mexican national coming through a U.S. port of entry who was listed among the FBI’s top 10 most wanted fugitives.

Guadalajara native Robert Francis Van Wisse, 51, crossed the U.S. border on foot at a port of entry in Laredo, Texas on Jan. 26 and was referred for a secondary inspection. After running his biometric data, agents discovered Van Wisse was wanted for murder in Austin, Texas, for a homicide that occurred more than 30 years ago.

According to reports, Laurie Stout, the female owner of a janitorial service was found dead in a building she’d been hired to clean at around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1983. She’d been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with a wire. She had a one-year-old daughter at the time.

Van Wisse, an 18-year-old college student at the time, was originally connected with the murder, but detectives couldn’t find enough concrete evidence to charge him. But thanks to updated technology, forensic investigators were able to finally link Van Wisse to the crime in 1996. The following year, he was also charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, and had been on the run ever since.

Customs and Border Protection stated he'll be turned over to Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI for extradition to Travis County, where he'll face justice.

While Van Wisse’s case is significantly more high profile than others, border agents regularly apprehend dangerous criminals at the Southwest U.S. border -- many of them illegal.  

Agents with the Calexico border station in California reported having caught two previously deported sex offenders so far in FY2017, and that’s just at one border station. Last Friday, border agents reported having seen a man running north from the U.S.-Mexico border fence. After catching him, agents discovered he was a 33-year-old Mexican citizen who’d been convicted of having sex with a minor before being deported.

The very next day, Calexico border agents apprehended another illegal alien crossing the border fence who turned out to be a 60-year-old Mexican national who was wanted for drug possession and firearms charges.  

But despite border patrol's success at catching some violent offenders, the frequency at which convicted criminals attempt to enter the United States illegally raises the question of how many successfully slip past agents only to disappear into American communities.

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