Man Fights to Keep His Killer Dad in Jail

Jan. 2 -- All 27-year-old Chip St. Clair knows for sure about his childhood is that it was filled with secrets.

Until the age of 5 he had a different name, and his family moved dozens of times in the middle of the night. St. Clair also recalls the uncontrollable rage and abuse he endured from his father, who claimed he was a decorated Green Beret soldier.

Then at age 23, Chip learned the biggest secret of all: his father, David St. Clair, was really convicted killer Michael Grant, an escapee from an Indiana prison where he was serving time for stomping a child to death in 1970.

Grant and St. Clair's mother, Leslie Weaver, had been on the run for 26 years when a family fight revealed the truth about Grant, 62. Now, St. Clair is pushing to keep his father behind bars.

Michigan’s Most Wanted

The truth about his family came out in 1998, when Chip St. Clair and his fiancée were having dinner at his parents' home in Auburn Hills, Mich. He and his father got into an argument at the table.

When Chip got up to leave, his dad became violent and started beating him up, leaving him with a dislocated shoulder. Chip and his fiancée got away and called police. His father was arrested for the assault.

When Chip St. Clair called his aunt — Grant's sister — to tell her what happened, he received some shocking news about his father's past.

"She took a breath and said, 'He's not who he says he is. He is really Michael Grant, an escaped child killer from 1973,'" St. Clair told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

The next day, St. Clair said he called police and told them that his father was really Grant, a man who was one of Michigan's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives. Police ran his fingerprints and realized it was true.

As Grant went back to prison, his arrest opened up a Pandora's box of secrets for his son.

In the summer of 1970, Grant was dating Vicki Ingersoll, a waitress in Mishawaka, Ind. While she worked the late shift one night, he baby-sat her sons, Scott, 3, and Thomas, 5. Grant later told police that the boys got rowdy in the bathtub, and when he jerked Scott from the tub, the boy urinated on his feet. Enraged, Grant beat and stomped Scott to death. He was convicted of manslaughter and given a 2-