Sherman, Conn., population 3,600, is a good place to hide. That’s where Robert Gordon Stackowitz, who disappeared from a minimum security Carroll County prison work camp nearly 48 years ago, had been hiding in plain sight since at least 1990.
“It’s a little tiny town in the country where people mind their own business,” said Mark Heinonen, a close friend who knew Stackowitz as Bob Gordon.
Monday morning, Stackowitz, a well-liked boat repairman, was arrested at his home by Connecticut state troopers and the U.S. Marshal Fugitive Task Force. He’s being held in the Bridgeport Correctional Center awaiting extradition to Henry County, where in 1966 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for robbery by force.
Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said it will be up to Henry officials to decide what should happen to Stackowitz, now 71. He could be returned to prison and may face new charges.
His case, compelling in its simplicity, was reopened five months ago by the DOC’s Fugitive Apprehension Unit. They discovered Stackowitz had used his name on undisclosed documents in Connecticut. Though he went by Bob Gordon, his full name is listed on property tax records.
A Social Security application also figured into the investigation, said Hogan, though she wouldn’t say how.
The clincher came when investigators compared Stackowitz’s Connecticut driver’s license picture to a photograph of him while in custody in Georgia. The driver’s license was under the name Stackowitz.
"I think he was off the radar for a number of years and at some point probably felt confident we weren't looking for him anymore," said Tony Schilling, supervisory inspector for the Marshals Service's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force.
Schilling said he can't recall another case where a Georgia fugitive had been on the lam for so long.
Stackowitz was just 23 years old when he escaped. He had complained of being sick, Hogan said, and was taken to the prison infirmary, where he was last seen in Georgia’s custody.
It’s unknown where he spent the next 22 years, but in 1990 he settled in Sherman, a one-stoplight town on the New York state line. That year, according to public records, Stackowitz purchased the home where he was arrested.
Heinonen described him as a “good guy, very friendly.”
“An outstanding person,” Heinonen told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Liked to drink beer, liked to party. And a very talented mechanic.”
Stackowitz also had a longtime girlfriend who lives in Sherman, he said. She could not be reached for comment.
“He didn’t seem like the type who had anything to hide,” Heinonen said. The two men rarely discussed their pasts, he said, but he assumed Stackowitz was from Connecticut.
Sherman’s top elected official, First Selectman Clay Cope, said he would often see the man he knew as Bob Gordon at the town’s only grocery store.
“People just knew that he was a motorboat repairman,” said Cope, a Republican running for Congress. “This was a very quiet man living in a very quiet town, carrying a big secret.”
When that secret was finally revealed Monday morning, Stackowitz was at a loss for words.
“He was a little speechless,” said Michael Saraceno, the town’s resident state trooper. “It’s been so long that I think he reached a point in his head where he thought they would never find him.”
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