"Brainwashed"

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 15 -- Heather C. Tallchief, one of the most sought after fugitives in the U.S. after disappearing with an armored car and $2.5 million, ended almost 12 years on the run when she walked into a federal courthouse and surrendered.

"Ms. Tallchief, dressed in a gray blazer, a pink blouse and pale olive slacks, was led away in handcuffs and leg irons."

Contrary to previous reports, Ms. Tallchief said she was not the mastermind behind the crime, but rather a victim of her suspected accomplice, Roberto Solis, who brainwashed her.  Solis, who served time in prison for killing an armored car driver in 1969, eluded capture.

Ms. Tallchief, a Seneca Indian born in Buffalo, N.Y., said she lived a largely unhappy life, ostracized at school as she followed the punk rock scene and became addicted to crack cocaine.

She says Mr. Solis kept an altar in his apartment with a goat's head, crystals and tarot cards, all of which she initially found shocking.  But she came to accept his beliefs, particularly that their meeting and "spiritual journey" were predestined.

"He was reformed.  He wrote poetry.  I knew his mother.  He was a very normal person.  If you sat down and met him, you would probably actually enjoy him.  You would laugh at his jokes.  You would think he was a nice person.  There was never anything about him that you would think he was a heinous, horrible murdering con."

She took flight, she said, at first disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair pushed by Mr. Solis.  She later led a low-key life in Amsterdam as a hotel maid, affecting an English accent that she still faintly speaks with today.

"It's a lonely life, being a fugitive.  And I certainly don't go to, you know, book clubs and, you know, cake sales and stuff.  I don't have coffee morning with the girls."

From The New York Times; Friday, September 16, 2005.