U.S. Marshals Service's Ohio Violent Fugitive Unit Logs 60K Arrest

CLEVELAND — Some killed. Others scammed, raped, robbed or busted out of prison.

They fled the law to far flung hiding spots in Florida or Oregon or Mexico, while others stayed hidden close by. Some created fake identities and hid for decades.

But ultimately, the U.S. Marshals Service’s Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force arrested them — 60,000 of them.

The milestone arrest came on March 24, as the team made up of local police officers and deputy marshals tracked David Wayne Garner, who is accused of fatally shooting a man in the head in East Cleveland. Officers found him hiding in a Cleveland Heights apartment and arrested him.

“When there is a danger to the public on our streets, it’s the first call I make — to the U.S. marshals,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said. “Whenever I call, the task force delivers. The fact that they’ve made 60,000 arrests shows the value that they have in our community in keeping our streets safe.”

The task force is the brainchild of northern Ohio’s U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott. For years, Elliott saw a need for a coordinated, all-hands-on-deck approach to tracking down the region’s most dangerous and elusive criminals. The idea grew in 2001, after a fugitive gunned down Cleveland police officer Wayne Leon.

Just two months after Elliott was appointed in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush as U.S. marshal for Northern Ohio, Elliott put his plan into action.

The task has since expanded to 125 police departments and 350 officers from police departments and sheriff’s offices. It has outposts in Cleveland, Canton, Mansfield, Toledo, Akron, Lorain, and Youngstown and Lake and Geauga counties.

It also has units that find missing children and ones that investigate sex offenders and cold cases.

Over the years, the task force has arrested 2,421 homicide suspects, 2,534 people accused of rape, 4,818 charged with robbery, 9,785 people suspected of felonious assaults and 15,652 people accused of drug crimes. It has also seized more than 2,900 guns and $4.5 million.

“Having the success they’ve had over the years, we feel good about those, but we’re never jumping for joy because we know there’s another one right after that,” Elliott said. “The best part, I think, is that they’ve made a significant difference in northern Ohio and across the country.”

Successes have mounted over the years. The task force tracked John Donald Cody, who conned people out of some $100 million and was on the run for two years, and arrested him in 2012 in Oregon.

The group found Frank Freshwaters, who walked away from a prison camp in 1959 for hitting and killing a pedestrian with his car, and finally arrested him in Florida in 2015.

In Cleveland, the task force arrested Christopher Whitaker in 2017. He tortured and killed 14-year-old Alianna DeFreeze. In 2019, the unit made three arrests within 36 hours of the fatal shooting of 9-year-old Saniyah Nicholson, who was killed by a stray bullet during a nearby gunfight.

Last year, officers tracked down Deshawn Vaughn, the gunman who killed Euclid police officer Jacob Derbin, before Vaughn took his own life.

The ones who have so far gotten away still gnaw at Elliott. He said the unit is still actively searching for Lester Eubanks, who bolted from prison in 1972, where he was serving a life sentence for abducting and killing a 14-year-old girl in Mansfield.

“We’re putting time and effort into that one,” Elliott said. “I feel we’re moving in the right direction on him.”

Law enforcement officials around the region praised the task force and its effectiveness.

Former Stark County Sheriff George Maier partnered with the task force shortly after he became sheriff in 2013.

“Almost immediately I saw a measurable difference,” Maier said. “I could foresee the value of that immediately in making a difference in getting the worst of the worst in our community locked up behind bars.”

Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene said he’s proud of his office’s involvement in the task force. He praised Elliott’s leadership and the unit’s coordinated approach and its effectiveness.

“There’s a synergy that’s created,” Greene said. “It’s much more effective as a group than law enforcement agencies are by themselves.”

The task force’s reputation for success has grown over the years.

In 2023, authorities searched for a 17-year-old boy accused of shooting three people, including killing a man who was riding his bicycle, in a five-week span.

Elliott and O’Malley called a news conference to ask for the public’s help in finding the boy, both for the community’s and the boy’s own safety, and to announce the marshals were joining the search.

Within two hours, the teen had surrendered.

“That’s a perfect example — people knew the marshals were coming,” O’Malley said. “That’s the reputation, that they’re coming for you.”

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