| Sarasota Herald-Tribune
John Pyle, fugitive, is on the market someplace, maybe in Central America working as a handyman in a beach town, entrenched, maybe, however ready to run ought to the shadow of the bounty hunter ever develop close to.
Rolando Bentancourt, bounty hunter, stays fixated on Pyle’s seize, and as quickly because the pandemic subsides he’ll journey, prone to Nicaragua, as a result of that’s the place he believes Pyle resides and darned if the accused pedophile is slipping by means of his fingers once more.
“I need to get this man,” Bentancourt stated. “It must be achieved.”
Anybody keep in mind Pyle? He’s the Sarasota resident with the prospector’s mustache who ran across the United States – sure, ran, 3,273 miles, from California to Key West – whereas carrying the American Flag as a strategy to increase cash for the Wounded Warriors Undertaking in 2012.
However our hero, it turned out, had a little bit of a darkish facet, as a result of in 2016 detectives discovered 31 photographs of kid pornography on his laptop computer, with 15 extra photographs containing sexual misconduct and two photographs of kid pornography involving bondage, one among which concerned a 1-year-old woman, in response to his arrest report. He was 450 years in jail.
He posted a $90,000 bond and have become a fugitive after not exhibiting up for a court docket listening to on Oct. 23, 2017. Subsequent factor anybody knew, he had boarded a Carnival cruise ship out of Tampa, disembarked in Cozumel, Mexico and by no means returned to his seat on the midnight buffet.
Vanished
As a part of his bond settlement, Pyle was compelled to give up his passport, however since cruise ships don’t require passports Pyle had a floating escape car at his disposal – one full with shuffleboard courts and sunshine decks.
Because it was believed Pyle had escaped to Mexico, the State Legal professional’s Workplace was in no hurry to spend cash and sources to convey him again, which didn’t sit significantly nicely with the parents at A Manner Out Bail Bonds in Punta Gorda. In order that they employed Bentancourt to search out him.
Betancourt, a bounty hunter since 1986 and based mostly in Miami, studied Pyle’s profile after which got here to Sarasota for interviews and surveillance earlier than he started chasing Pyle two years in the past. Utilizing info from private sources, and monitoring him on a tool, Betancourt positioned Pyle in Apodoco, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, an industrial city 1,580 miles north of Cozumel.
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Betancourt stated he was truly inside just a few blocks of Pyle however couldn’t arrest him due to a warrant snafu. There was additionally a authorities shutdown on the time, Betancourt stated, so he needed to let him go. Then the path grew chilly.
He stated he stays assured he’ll seize him, and has some “new stuff I’ve developed that I might pinpoint him with and find the place he’s at.”
Betancourt thinks Pyle is probably going in Nicaragua, hiding in a seaside city with an inflow of European vacationers. Pyle had a lightweight complexion and would try and mix in.
The chase has turn out to be private for Betancourt, who stated he is not going to receives a commission for the pursuit and arrest of Pyle as a result of too a lot time has handed. He doesn’t care in regards to the cash. He’s decided to seize the ghost.
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“Once I spend time on a case I don’t prefer to neglect about them and that is one among my circumstances I’m going to unravel,” he stated.
How might anybody acknowledge Pyle now? Properly, he way back shaved the prospector’s mustache he was well-known for, however he could nonetheless have a tattoo that reads:
“Success requires relentless ahead progress.″
The phrases had been meant as inspiration for Pyle to maintain operating.
However they work simply as nicely for these in pursuit.
Contact columnist Chris Anderson at [email protected]
