CLINTON, N.C. -- The old men passed their time watching television in their separate bedrooms, generally keeping to themselves in the small, worn house.
These two are in poor health, their home nurse said - Mr. Rufus, 76, with his fading memory and breathing problems, and Mr. Willie, 81, with his heart trouble and a limp from a recent stroke.
Willie Parker had moved in with Rufus Peterson, a relative of a relative, about three months ago, when Parker decided to leave his wife of 25 years. Peterson said he knows little else about Parker, except that "he is a real nice old man."
Certainly Peterson would have had no reason to suspect that his roommate was an escaped convict from Maryland, a man convicted decades ago of robbery and drug dealing.
Three U.S. marshals showed up Wednesday at Peterson's home, and Parker left not in handcuffs, but in tears, Peterson said. Parker has been at the Sampson County jail ever since, where the guards talk about how he's in bad shape and the warden says he plans to bill Maryland for the expensive medical care.
Using a cane, Parker hobbled to a videophone yesterday to speak to his jailhouse visitors. He said he truly thought that, 43 years after he slipped away from an Eastern Shore prison camp, no one was looking for him anymore.
His lifestyle in this rural town bears that out.
Although he changed names and moved around the country until the mid-1970s, he's been Willie Parker ever since. He moved back to his hometown of Clinton, about 90 miles southeast of Raleigh, in 1989.
Until he moved in with Peterson, he lived in the same house, with fake pink carnations planted in the flowerbed, for 16 years. He said he has been back to Baltimore and the Eastern Shore plenty of times over the years. He's in numerous public records and said he draws Social Security from his time in the Navy.
"I wasn't hiding from anybody," Parker said yesterday. "This is my home. I know a lot of people here."
Deputy Bryan Konig of the Eastern North Carolina U.S. Marshal's office said Maryland authorities found Parker because "they're trying to close some loose ends, and he's one of the oldest cold cases."
Mark Vernarelli, a Maryland prison spokesman, said he knows Maryland State Police are working on outstanding cases, but he wasn't aware of one this old. A state police spokesman said Friday night that Parker was captured as part of an initiative to find fugitives.
Parker's relatives aren't so sure.
His older brother, who lives in Randallstown, Md., and his only nephew, who lives in nearby Fayetteville, N.C., wonders whether Parker's estranged wife, Margie Parker, played a role on tipping off Maryland authorities. They say she is angry about the impending divorce and his unwillingness to give her any of a recent inheritance.
In a phone interview Friday night, Margie Parker said she did no such thing.
Margie Parker's daughter from another marriage, Marilyn Ward, said Parker may have been the one to do himself in: During the divorce proceedings, he referred the lawyers to Maryland prisons as they tried to check whether he ever divorced his first wife, an ailing woman who lives in Connecticut.
"He got his own self caught," Ward said testily. She said her mother had no idea Parker was a fugitive. "His own words got him where he is today."
Though opinions vary on what finally landed Parker behind bars, the relatives are all in agreement that he should not be there.
"He is not my favorite person in the world, but he should not be locked up," Ward said. "Why are they making such a big deal about finding a sick, old man? What are you going to do with an 81-year-old man?"
Parker said he is sick with "everything that you can name," including, he said, hepatitis C that can't be treated because of his weak heart.
He said doctors have told him he shouldn't expect to live much longer, maybe five or six years at the most.
Maryland State Police have said that Parker's age and health don't change the fact that he owes the state 29 years of unserved prison time. They have said that they are proceeding with extraditing him from North Carolina back to Maryland, which could take weeks.
Parker's original crime was an armed robbery in Baltimore. He was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison in 1953, according to articles published at the time in The Sun. He was released on parole in 1961 after serving 8 1/2 years, but two years later became a defendant in a federal marijuana case. He was convicted and made to serve the 31 years left on his robbery conviction.
He said then, as he does now, that he wasn't guilty. So he said he conned a farmer at the minimum-security prison to drive him to Baltimore, where he caught a Greyhound bus to New York.
"I left when I figured I had done enough time," he said.
He said he briefly used the name "Robert Lewis" and moved to different cities, including Chicago and New York. In Seattle, about 1972, he got caught driving a getaway car in an armed robbery case. He'd resumed using his real name by then, he said, and served two years of a 20-year sentence.
He said Washington prison officials told him Maryland authorities knew where he was but didn't want him. That, he said, was his last trip to prison.
In Clinton, he and relatives say he has lived a typical life, doing home contracting work, until his stroke last year.
"He'd quieted down," said Perlie Parker, his 83-year-old brother, who lives in Randallstown.
Perlie Parker's wife, Frances, said she had only recently learned of her brother-in-law's criminal past, when she found a trove of family letters addressed to various Baltimore judges pleading for leniency and parole.
Perlie Parker's son, James, has been visiting his uncle daily at the jail. Peterson is James Parker's cousin. Parker called the nephew Wednesday evening, after his arrest.
"He told me, 'I'm in jail,' and I laughed," said James Parker, 64. "I just didn't believe him."
Standing in Peterson's green-painted kitchen yesterday, nurse Kisha Cannon is also in disbelief. She said she cannot reconcile what she has learned about Parker's past with "the good-hearted man" she cooks supper for on the weekends.
"All of the nurses who come here are talking about it."
julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com
Sun reporter Annie Linskey contributed to this article.