US fugitive captured after 56 years on the run will be released on parole

A US man who escaped from a prison and was on the run for 56 years has been recaptured, but is soon to be released on parole.

Ohio man Frank Freshwaters was sentenced to 20 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 1959.

He was speeding when he struck and killed 24-year-old Eugene Flynt.

Freshwaters was sent to the Ohio State Reformatory in February 1959, the prison where Shawshank Redemption was largely filmed.

Once in prison Freshwaters was “quickly able to earn the trust of the prison officials,” US Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio, Peter Elliot, said.

Using this relationship Freshwaters had himself transferred to an ‘honour farm’ where he managed to escape in September 1959, spending less than a year behind bars.

He remained on the run for the next 56 years, before he was caught and arrested in Melbourne, Florida, in May 2015.

Now a parole board in Ohio has decided to grant him parole, JoEllen Smith, a spokeswoman for the board, told CNN.

Freshwater’s attorney, Gordon Beggs, told WSYX his client lived an honest and clean life, and had never forgotten the accident which put him in prison.