Man on the Run
Man on the Run
Ron Humphrey
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I met Jeff Andrews in 1986, when we both were serving time in a federal prison in Connecticut. We worked together in the same area of the cable factory and, for a while, played on the same prison softball team. Jeff helped put together recreation programs and talent shows for the inmates. Years later, after losing touch completely, we discovered another connection: Jeff’s a volunteer with Prison Fellowship in Virginia; I’m a PF staff writer in the same state. It seemed only natural for us to get together…“
If you turn yourself in, you will spend the rest of your life in prison,” the attorney warned his client.
That was not what Jeff Andrews, a fugitive on the run for the past eight years, wanted to hear. He had accumulated 24 arrests and seven felony convictions in six different states, all on financial, property and drug-related cases. But with each new arrest, the authorities could not tie him to the past outstanding warrants, so skilled had Jeff become at changing his name and his life story. In fact, “Jeff Andrews” is a name he picked out of the Virginia Beach phone directory in 1980 while on the run. It is his legal name today.
Jeff was born Jack W. MacDonald in San Mateo, California, 56 years ago. His father was an army captain during World War II and Korea. When his father retired from the military, he became a cross-country salesman and moved his family of five often. Jeff finished high school in New Jersey and spent a year at Michigan State before he flunked out.
“I grew long hair and a beard and played the drums in a rock group all night and couldn’t get up the next morning to attend class,” he remembers. So Jeff gave up on college and, following a whirlwind romance, married and moved to California, where he became a buyer for Macy’s upscale department store. But the great job came with pressure, and Jeff responded with alcohol. “It started out with just a few drinks after work. Then I found myself staying out all night, a behavior that destroyed my marriage, my career, and my life. I made some bad decisions and got involved with some bad people. I wound up first in jail, then prison.”
Before long, Jeff had seen the insides of jails in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Florida. Then he learned that he was able to function well in society without turning to crime, so he gave it up. But there was a small problem: He had left behind a string of offenses for which he had never been brought to justice. Jeff became a classic fugitive: living a life of lies and bogus names, skipping from city to city and from job to job whenever he felt heat. “The hair on the back of my neck would stand up whenever the cops were closing in on me,” Jeff describes. He would quickly dump his possessions into his car and drive off, leaving behind friends, a job, a surprised employer, and an apartment. Later he’d phone his employer, who usually confirmed that the cops had shown up a couple of days after Jeff vanished. After eight years on the lam, Jeff approached an attorney and told his story. But spending the rest of his life in prison wasn’t yet an option to Jeff.
