‘Little Houdini’ treated as escape risk, due in court

Florida authorities were taking extra steps Tuesday to keep Christopher Daniel Gay in custody after recapturing the fugitive known as “Little Houdini.”

“He is being treated as an escape risk. He is in isolation,” said Carrie Eleazer, public information officer for the sheriff’s office in Polk County, Fla. “We’ve urged [jailers] to take every precaution.”

Polk County Sheriff

Christopher Daniel Gay, 34, is back in custody.

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Gay, who had been wanted since slipping out of handcuffs and fleeing from a patrol car outside a Kennesaw Waffle House two weeks ago, is scheduled to appear in a Polk County court Tuesday afternoon.

Gay stole a tractor-trailer and used it to pilfer a front-end loader from a construction site in central Florida, authorities said. He was arrested Monday near a Walmart in Lakeland, with the loader still on board.

Gay tried to evade capture. Authorities said he jumped out of the 18 wheeler onto the hood of a patrol car and fled toward a wooded area nearby before Polk County deputies nabbed him.

Gay had been on the run since his Waffle House escape March 3, which happened while he was being driven by a Coffee County, Tenn., sheriff’s deputy from Florida to Tennessee to answer charges there.

During a stop at the Kennesaw restaurant, Gay unlocked his handcuffs and leg shackles before escaping from the patrol car.

The incident sparked a statewide manhunt. Authorities shut down Kennesaw State University and halted traffic while police dogs tried in vain to track Gay. They are now looking into whether he might have stolen a rental truck in Kennesaw that went missing shortly afterward.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Coffee County authorities will seek to extradite Gay again or how they would transport him if they do.

“It’ll be a while before we get him … probably several years,” Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves said with a chuckle Tuesday.

Graves said his department will take extra precautions if and when that happens.

“We’ll just send an additional officer,” said Graves. “This guy’s good at picking locks but he’s stupid at staying out.”

The March 3 escape from custody was Gay’s third this decade. His exploits earned him the “Little Houdini” nickname, and he’s even had a country music song written about him.

In January 2007, Gay showed up at a racetrack in country singer Crystal Gayle’s tour bus, which had allegedly been stolen. Gay told track officials he was there to pick up NASCAR star Tony Stewart. Gay was arrested soon after in Daytona Beach.

That incident came on the heels of what remains Gay’s signature escape, also in January 2007. While being transported to Alabama to face charges for stealing a recreational vehicle, Gay sneaked away from a pair of policemen at a rest stop in South Carolina.

Gay stole a pickup and drove it nearly 300 miles northwest to Manchester, Tenn., where he allegedly took a Wal-Mart tractor-trailer loaded with thousands of dollars of merchandise. News reports at the time said Gay was headed to visit his mother, who was dying of cancer. He ditched the truck in her front yard, then dashed off into the woods.

That inspired Grammy-winning songwriter Tim O’Brien. His song, sung to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd,” preserves Gay’s place in the outlaw Hall of Fame.

“Stole a pickup in Carolina, then a Wal-Mart truck with 18 wheels. He drove toward his dyin’ mama in the Cheatham County hills. And it’s down those lanes and back roads the police made their chase. And he almost made her trailer, he almost saw her face.”

Two weeks later, the Associated Press reported, Gay’s mother died of cancer.

Gay faces a variety of burglary and theft charges in Florida, as well as charges in Georgia and Tennessee.