After 17 years on the run, an Alabama fugitive who thought he was descended from the Scottish Robin Hood was apprehended.

The 17-year game of cat and mouse that crossed state lines and sparked a lengthy trail of false identities, digital footprints, and myth-like bravado came to an end on Friday when U.S. Marshals arrested John Joseph “Jay” Kloss III in North Port, Florida.

When a Jefferson County grand jury indicted Kloss on two counts of first-degree sodomy of a child under the age of twelve and one count of second-degree sodomy of a child in 2008, he became sought. Instead of confronting the charges, Kloss disappeared, leaving behind a troubling criminal case and a daring statement to his colleagues: "They will never find me."

As it happens, they did.

A Runaway with Delusions of Folklore

According to the authorities, Kloss had a profoundly romanticized conviction that he was descended from former Scottish outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor, who has long been portrayed as a Robin Hood character. According to police officials, such idea might have contributed to his sense of invincibility.

Kloss was not acting just instinctively. He was exceptionally prepared for life on the run. Kloss had the kind of technical expertise that most fugitives can only imagine, having worked in computer engineering, HAM radio operations, information technology, and even video game production.

He installed home security systems at one point in the early 2000s. Ironically, he probably used that information to avoid detection by evading physical and digital barriers. In addition to having a strange understanding of horseshoeing and having refueled planes at an airfield after high school, he may have been ready to vanish into off-grid or rural life.

From Florida to Operation FALCON

In 2008, during Operation FALCON, a nationwide fugitive hunt, Kloss went missing for the first time. His case has since been worked on by more than thirty task force officers and senior inspectors. The leads dried up. Years went by. However, the matter was never put on hold by investigators.

Then something changed in late 2024.

Both the Florida/Caribbean Regional Fugitive Task Force (FCRFTF) and the Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force (GCRFTF) in Alabama received new information. They employed sophisticated investigation techniques over the course of the following few months, such as contrasting FBI age-progression sketches with current images of a man in Sarasota County, Florida, who was living under false pretenses.

The parts came together this month.

The USMS, GCRFTF, FCRFTF, and USMS Middle District of Florida officers surrounded and apprehended Kloss without incident on Friday.

"They will never discover me."

"They will never find me," U.S. Marshal William Berger of Florida's Middle District recalled him saying. "We disproved him today."

Berger emphasized that justice never ends and commended the multi-agency effort's tenacity. "This capture demonstrates once more that we never give up on a criminal, regardless of how long they have been evading capture," he said.

The arrest serves as a sobering reminder that, even for people with a portfolio full of IT experience and a self-made mythos wrapped in tartan fiction, it is becoming increasingly difficult to disappear in the digital era.

John Joseph Kloss's capture is more than simply a news story; it is a long-overdue denouement for the victims who are still waiting for justice and the agents who pursued the case.