A Carmel Valley, Calif. mother known as "the fugitive mom" is free, ready to return to California where she will be greeted with friends and family after nearly a year behind bars.
Laughing throughout her comments, Susan LeFevre had to literally be pulled away from the microphones by her husband after she was released from prison Tuesday.
“I’m delighted that this nightmare is over,” LeFevre told reporters. “It’s been a very traumatic… a time that has been so much harder than I would have expected in some ways. I didn’t think I would make it at times. It’s been really terrible.”
LeFevre -- who was living in California under the name Marie Walsh -- seemed to be living a storybook life when U.S. Marshals tracked her down and sent her back to Michigan to finish a prison term for a drug conviction.
LeFevre escaped from a Detroit prison more than 30 years ago after a state trooper testified that she was the ringleader of a Michigan heroin enterprise.
Her prison-break plan, as she explained it, was simple enough: She escaped notice of the guards, climbed over a barbed wire fence, and then located a vehicle. Inside the automobile, her grandfather and another relative said a rosary while they waited for her.
LeFevre's husband, Alan Walsh, and two daughters apparently knew nothing about her criminal past. He was with her Tuesday as she walked out of the prison just before 9 a.m. in Detroit.
She seemed to be overwhelmed by the amount of media attention she faced outside the prison and said she is excited about getting back to San Diego. “I look forward to going back to my quiet life,” she said.
However, when she was asked questions about her stay behind bars she wanted to continue talking. So much so, that her husband had to tug at her arm and urge her to leave several times. "Let's go Marie," he said.
When LeFevre spoke negatively about her experience in prison, her husband interrupted her. At several points, LeFevre turned and said “You can’t do that.”
“My children have just been remarkable, I’m just a very lucky person,” she said at the same time as praising her husband for his efforts to get her out of prison. “If he can stick with a wife that’s facing, comes up with these surprises, than anyone can stay in a marriage.”
She thanked her family and the many supporters she had never before. “At my lowest point one day I felt I was giving up,” she said. “All of a sudden, I got these letters that people I didn’t even know were praying for me.
Local
“I just felt with that many people praying for me, this was going to end up good.”
When reporters asked questions of LeFevre, Alan Walsh tried to end the news conference, telling his wife “It’s time to go.”
As for when they will return to San Diego, the couple didn’t want to discuss the details. “We didn’t want to discuss it over the phone,” explained LeFevre.
After leaving the prison, LeFevre and her husband headed to a hotel near the airport.
The impending return is the talk of the suburb. Next-door neighbor Hank Greenberg said, "It's about time she came home. It's too bad she had to go away in the first place." He says that as far as he's concerned, she's still Marie Walsh.
