ARTICLE: County frees ill ex-fugitive it didn't want

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County frees ill ex-fugitive it didn't want
Was extradited from New Mexico and had quadruple-bypass surgery
By Tom Beal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Pima County has released an extremely ill fugitive it never really wanted in its custody.


Douglas M. Reilly, who was extradited to Tucson last month in an air ambulance and given quadruple heart-bypass surgery at county expense, was released from jail Wednesday after a judge last week gave him three years' probation for eight counts of conspiracy, fraud, forgery and fraudulent schemes.


Reilly, who spent his eight years on the lam in nearby Deming, N.M., said Wednesday night that he didn't expect to live long enough to complete probation.


"I've got diabetes, I've got heart problems, I've had strokes. On that air ambulance, they didn't expect me to make it," Reilly said.


The Pima County Sheriff's Department had tried to find some way of not serving Reilly with a warrant after New Mexico authorities discovered that a hospitalized man known to them as George Allen was actually Reilly, a fugitive from Arizona. The Sheriff's Department did not want to be stuck for the cost of his transport and care.


Reilly had spent his exile at the Church of Angels of Mercy outside Deming, where he helped give food and shelter to the homeless and married Emma Allen, the woman who started the church and shelter that took Allen in.


His wife discovered the truth about Reilly's past when he was hospitalized for heart failure and had to provide identification for him in his real name.


Reilly, 62, said his wife knew he had a different name, but "I never told her I was a wanted fugitive."


He also isn't certain that he was divorced from his first wife when he married Emma. "I don't really know. She said she was going to divorce me when she left. I haven't heard from her because I've been on the lam."


In need of a local contact to be released, Reilly had his attorney ask Tucsonan Marshall Home to take him in when Home appeared at his sentencing. Home said he didn't know Reilly well when he posted bail of $5,500 for him in 1997 - money that Home forfeited when Reilly skipped town.


Prosecutor John Evans, an assistant attorney general, said Reilly could have received a long sentence for the eight counts on which he was convicted, but Evans didn't "allege the mandatory" and moved to dismiss an unlawful-flight charge.


Evans said he was satisfied that Reilly repudiated the "constitutionalist" basis on which his frauds were based.


"I do a lot of these guys," said Evans. It's a victory to have them acknowledge that they're subject to the same laws as everyone else, he said.


The fake-check scheme that Reilly got involved in was promulgated by a California woman with ties to patriot groups such as the Montana Freemen. Reilly bought authentic-looking checks from her for $100 each and tried to use them to pay two mortgages and the Arizona Department of Revenue, Evans said.


Reilly said the woman who sold him the checks "was kind of conning all sorts of people. What she was saying was basically true, but using loopholes in the law and you can't do that."


"I'm sorry for what I did," Reilly said, "and very thankful that Arizona has dealt with me the way it did."


Evans said Pima County asked Superior Court Judge Howard Fell to force Reilly to repay $100,000 in medical expenses, but Fell assessed him $6,900 - the cost of his extradition.


Reilly said he will try to have his medical bills from University Medical Center paid by the state's indigent health-care system and start paying back the extradition costs with disability checks.