An identity hearing was scheduled Tuesday for a San Diego woman accused of escaping from a Michigan state prison 37 years ago.
Acting on information from Michigan corrections officials, San Diego police said they arrested Judy Lynn Hayman, 60, at her Balboa Park-area residence Feb. 3. According to police, the defendant initially claimed to be someone else and provided documents bearing her alias but eventually admitted to being Hayman under questioning.
However, the defendant — whose true name is Jamie Lewis, according to her attorneys — has not admitted in court to being the person wanted in Michigan.
On Feb. 7, she pleaded not guilty to a criminal complaint charging her with being a fugitive from justice.
Michigan corrections officials said Hayman pleaded guilty in June 1976 to an attempted larceny charge for trying to steal clothes from a Detroit-area store and was sentenced to serve between between 16 months and two years in custody. Ten months later, she escaped from the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility.
If the defendant is found to be Hayman as authorities allege, she would be the second female escapee from a Michigan prison to turn up in San Diego in six years.
Carmel Valley resident Susan LeFevre, 53, was arrested at her home in April 2008, 32 years after she climbed a barbed-wire perimeter fence at the Detroit House of Corrections and absconded with help from her grandfather.
At the time of her escape, she had served about 12 months of a 10- to 20-year sentence for selling heroin to an undercover police officer at age 19.
LeFevre got married, had three children and lived under an assumed identity until authorities, acting on an anonymous tip, caught up to her. She was sent back to Michigan, served another year in jail and was paroled in May 2009.
