Marie Walsh's double life after she escaped jail as a teenager

Marie Walsh's double life after she escaped jail as a teenager

 

For more than 20 years, Marie Walsh had lived a comfortable life in suburban San Diego with her loving husband and three teenage children.

But then one spring morning in 2008, a police officer turned up in her garden with a mugshot of her aged 19 - and the past she'd kept hidden for three decades crashed into that very ordinary life.

The elegant, blonde 52-year-old suddenly found herself locked in handcuffs and on her way back to the Michigan prison she had escaped in 1976

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Double life: Marie Walsh kept her true identity as a fugitive hidden for more than 30 years - even from her husband and children

She had never told her husband or children the truth - she was a fugitive, who broke out of jail 14 months into a ten-year sentence for a heroin deal she said she didn't commit.

She said: 'They thought they knew the world and knew their lives, and then all of a sudden their lives kind of exploded.'

The police officer's visit snatched away the comfortable life she had built up for herself, as she came face to face with her past as Susan LeFevre, a rebellious teenager who 'got on the wrong path' - but always claimed she was innocent.

She could have faced more than 15 years in jail. but after spending a hellish 13 months behind bars she was released.

Now the 56-year-old mother has written a book about her experiences, A Tale of Two Lives, and appeared on the Today programme this morning to talk about her secret life.

Dark past: Marie Walsh spent 14 months in jail on drug dealing charges before she escaped in 1976 at the age of 21

Escape plan: Mrs Walsh's grandfather visited her in the Detroit House of Corrections and told her 'Susan, you have to get out of here'

Mrs Walsh grew up as Susan LeFevre in Detroit, Michigan, where she became a rebellious teenager who fell in with the wrong crowd and dabbled in marijuana and cocaine.

But in 1974, when she was just 19, she claims a 22-year-old friend lured her along to a heroin deal - and police arrested her, too.

She pleaded guilty after lawyers told her she would get probation as it was a first time offence. Instead,a Michigan judge sentenced her to ten years in prison, and she found herself locked up in the Detroit House of Corrections.

After 14 months, her grandfather turned up to visit her with a shocking proposition.

He told her: 'Susan, you need to get out of here.'

She wrote: '[I thought] What planet am I on? Had I really just heard my grandfather tell me to escape from prison?"

Building a new life: Marie Walsh with her daughters Katie and Maureen. They said they had always suspected their mother could have a secret

So she climbed a 20-foot, barbed-wire fence and started running towards her grandfather's car, as a search helicopter hovered overhead.

She wrote: 'If they shot at me, I wanted them to kill me. I was not going back.'

And she told the Today programme: 'I wouldn't have had the courage without my grandfather helping me out. He was wonderful.'

He drove his granddaughter to his house in New Baltimore, Michigan, where her mother gave her a few hundred dollars. She said goodbye to her family and caught a ride with friends to the West Coast.

Free at last: Marie Walsh on her release from jail in May 2009

She wrote: 'Somewhere between the cornfields of the Midwest and the western Rockies, Susan ceased to exist.'

She used her middle name, Marie, and took the last name Day. She did odd jobs, keeping out of trouble and staying under the radar.

She wrote: 'I was no longer a party girl struggling through college classes. I was a fugitive from the law... I had no illusions. I was an outlaw. Yet that jump over the prison fence was a leap toward new possibilities.

When she met and married Alan Walsh, a finance executive, she wanted to tell him - but couldn't risk it.

So she kept her dark past a secret from him and her three children, two daughters and a son now aged 18, 23 and 25. 

It meant she couldn't even go to her mother's funeral. In the book, she describes going with her husband to her parents' home in Michigan to say her goodbyes to her dying mother, but explained they wouldn't be going to the funeral.

He asked her: ' What kind of person doesn't go to her own mother's funeral?'

At the time, she said she thought: 'The kind of person who has never told you the secret of her past.'

Speaking on the Today programme, her daughters Katie and Maureen said they thought her mother was hiding something, but never suspected the truth.

A tale of two lives: Marie Walsh shortly after she was arrested in 2008, left, and right, as Susan LeFevre in the 1970s

Moving on: Mrs Walsh - then known as Marie Day - married financial executive Alan Walsh after she escaped to California

Maureen said: 'We had a normal childhood. Often times I found little things here and there like letters with a different last name. I thought maybe she had a secret sort of, maybe a different husband in the past or something more personal like that, nothing serious.'

Mrs Walsh said she tried to turn herself in several times, but attorneys spoke to Michigan prosecutors who said she would end up spending her original time in jail as well as extra time for escaping.

'Odyssey': Marie Walsh has written a book about her double life as a mother and fugitive

Eventually, police caught up with her through a crime tip-off website. In April 2008, a man called  claiming to be a landscape gardener who had accidentally cut a palm frond which had fallen on to one of her plants.

But when she went outside he pulled out a badge and  - asked if she was Susan LeFevre.

She told him: 'I am Marie Walsh.' Then he showed her the 1974 mugshot.

Mrs Walsh called her husband and she was escorted to a police car and taken to Michigan in a week-long journey.

She said prison was worse than she expected. She told the Today programme: 'I didn't expect prison to be that hard. It was very traumatic. That's why I had to write the book.'

Mrs Walsh began writing the book in jail, but completed it after she was released on parole in 2009.

She said she hopes it will open readers' eyes to the harsh treatment women inmates receive.

Once she has finished promoting her book, she said she wants to go back into her normal life.

She wrote: 'For the most part, I am doing well in my transition to a normal life.

'My friends remark that I seem unchanged... Then when I least expect it, there are moments that I feel a deep sense of loss or sadness.'