Over 30 years after he escaped from custody in Miami-Dade, the elderly man who evaded authorities for three decades is back behind bars in South Florida.
Ian Jackson MacDonald, 71, was transported to the Federal Detention Center in Miami Tuesday following his arrest last week in a rural town on Florida's west coast, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
MacDonald is being held on a federal escape charge and is expected to go before a judge this week.
The geriatric fugitive had been on the run since shortly after his 1980 arrest in Fort Lauderdale on a Canadian arrest warrant
MacDonald, also known as "Big Mac," had been charged with trafficking up to 500 pounds of marijuana from Canada to South Florida. While he was being held in the Federal Correctional Institute in South Miami-Dade County, the moustachioed, blond-haired MacDonald, 41 at the time, faked a heart attack and was transferred to Coral Reef Hospital for treatment.
While at the hospital, Big Mac was being watched by a private security officer. On June 16, 1980, he asked to be unshackled so he could take a shower. The guard obliged, then took a walk to the nurse's station.
By the time the guard returned, Big Mac was gone.
MacDonald stayed off the radar of law enforcement until the U.S. Marshals Service in Miami formed a Cold Case Fugitive Squad and began going through the MacDonald case file.
They claim MacDonald had obtained a fraudulent Pennsylvania driver's license in the name Jack D. Hunter. Authorities tracked Big Mac to Homosassa, a small town north of Tampa, where he, as Hunter, had purchased a home in 2009.
