LIFE> Odds and Ends
Murderer hid in caves for years
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-31 09:47

A fugitive murderer spent 16 years hiding in caves around his home village in northern Portugal before he was recaptured, police said yesterday.

Manuel Cruz, 54, had a deep tan and a long beard when he was arrested on Wednesday in the forested hills where he once had been a shepherd, Inspector Carlos Gomes told the Associated Press. "He wasn't very strong but he wasn't in very bad shape," said Gomes. "He looked like Robinson Crusoe."

Cruz was serving a 10-year sentence for murder when he fled during a weekend furlough in the village in 1993. He was convicted after an argument over goats with a local woman during which Cruz pushed her and she hit her head on the ground, later dying.

Cruz had been hiding in caves and hollowed-out banks of earth in "very hilly, very hostile terrain" surrounding Anisso, about 400 kilometers north of Lisbon, Gomes said.