When federal agents ended Robert Woodring's extraordinary 37-year stint as a fugitive from South Florida justice, the 82-year-old was keeping a low profile in Mexico.
But Woodring's life in the decades before he went on the lam reads like an action-packed movie script.
He was a convicted con man; a DEA informant; a former Ferguson, Mo., police officer accused of beating a handcuffed prisoner; the target of a nationwide search because of suspicions he kidnapped his ex-wife and baby; a suspected gun-runner who was detained in Haiti; and an injured Korean War veteran who joined the Marines when he was 15 and served in the Air Force.